


Human Again

by Anonymississippi



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast, F/F, Farmgirl!Alex, General!Astra, Painter!Kara, TerribleHuman!Max
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-13 19:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 44,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7984036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex Danvers sets off to find her sister after an incident prevents Kara from traveling to the Artist's Festival in the next village. But, when she finds Kara held hostage in an enchanted castle in the middle of a mysterious forest, she offers herself as hostage in return for Kara's freedom.</p><p>She's soon living with a woman covered in the scars she meted out to past victims. A former General who is more likely to yell at her than deliver a kind word. But, when their connection to Kara draws them closer, Alex gets wrapped up in an adventure she never planned on, becoming the key to a decade-old enchantment placed over the entire castle. Will her changing feelings break the spell before the final petal falls?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Artist's Festival

**Author's Note:**

> i was without internets and freaking out over my other wip so long story short i wrote the whole thing in one weekend so yall get an update errday

Alex pushes through the last of the brambles at the edge of the forest, making her way to the main road. The wheat chaff looks nearly as golden as Kara’s hair in the twilight, crop rows rearing their high and healthy heads, awaiting the autumn harvest and the sharp slice of a field hand’s swooping sickle. Another season past, another crop grown, another year of provincial living outside the quiet village of Midvale.

She and Kara get by well enough managing and working the farm themselves, occasionally receiving help from their closet neighbor, Monsieur Henri Henshaw. After the passing of Alex’s parents, Henri took it upon himself to instruct both girls in the day-to-day duties of farm life. Henri had lost two daughters of his own and had served with Alex’s father in the border wars. Perhaps he saw the girls as a duty, a godsend, a second chance or even occasional company, for his compassion, kindness and patience toward them have been extremely evident over the past ten years. It was not any man who would take on the instruction of an orphaned daughter and a family’s ward, especially when he had his own crops to tend to.

“Bonsoir, Henri,” Alex says, waving her hand at the good monsieur over his listing fence posts.

“Bonsoir, Alexandra,” Henri replies. “I heard you caused quite the stir in the village today.”

“Oh, surely that silliness hasn’t circulated so quickly, has it?”

“I’ve had many people leaving for the fair pass by with the news. You must admit it was a rather funny story.”

Alex gathers her mud-stained skirt up in both hands and steps upon the bottom post of the fence, leaning over to observe Henri as he tosses hay into a cart with a pitchfork.

“Kara has not heard, has she?”

“She’s stopped every traveler on the road who has passed to question them about their crafts for the fair. Of course she heard.”

Alex sighs and shifts the weight of her basket to the other arm. “This will only make her worry more.”

“As if you do not worry for her well-being for the duration and change of every season, with the severity of winter, spring’s sincerity, summer’s fortitude, and autumn’s resiliency.”

Alex scoffs at Henri’s paternal poetry.

“She needs my concern far more than I need hers.”

“So you say,” Henri answers.

“I must go and see her off,” Alex replies, stepping down from the bottom post. “Best to you, Henri.”

“Bonsoir, Alex.”

Alex trudges further up the road before turning down the homeward path to the cottage. Her trips to the village are infrequent. She dislikes the scrutiny, a woman of her age, unmarried, oftentimes more consumed with the text in front of her nose than any of the gentlemen in the village—to say nothing of the fiasco with the Royal Engineers and their contractor, Monsieur Lorde, from this very afternoon.

How was it _her_ fault that the surveyors were misplacing the stakes for measurement near the roadside? And when she’d plucked the compass from a blustering Lieutenant’s hand and mapped the distances with a practiced ease, he’d turned red as his coat and went sulking back to his tent. Cue the heated encounter with the Monsieur Maxwell Lorde about his faulty devices, and her harmless excursion to the village for supplies could not have ended more terribly. If only Kara would not address it and let them both move on to more pleasant matters.

“Kara,” Alex calls, stepping through the front door. “I have the pigments you asked for.”

“Alex!”

Kara comes bounding across the single room of the cottage, covered in paint from fingertip to elbow, her once-white apron muddied with such a conglomeration of color that all Alex can make out are various shades of brown.

“I can mix it with the white and apply it, then finish this piece after dinner, and set out first light tomorrow.”

“I’m still uneasy about you traveling through the night,” Alex tells her, unpacking the baguettes, the eggs, the jams and other extravagancies they cannot acquire from the land by themselves. “Alone, no less.”

“I won’t be alone. Philippe will be with me.”

“Philippe will not do much good against a menacing pigeon, he spooks so easily.”

“Alex, you know I will be fine,” Kara says with a pointed stare. “Unless the highwaymen have lead-lined manacles, I’ll shove them off the roadside and continue on my merry way!”

“You should have gone today,” Alex mutters. “You could have traveled with Madame Giry and her sons. Their cart is loaded down with her husband’s woodwork.”

“But I wouldn’t have been able to finish!” Kara objects, yanking Alex by the arm to see her final painting. “I have to add the coloring to the sky here,” Kara points toward several spaces on the canvas. “But other than that… what do you think?”

“I think you deserve much better than life in a farmhouse with the likes of me,” Alex says, taking a closer look at the painting. “Instruction with the masters… Kara, this is beautiful.” The summer landscape of meadow and forest’s edge Kara had captured with brushstroke and color alone trick Alex into sniffing the painted, two-dimensional wildflowers. The scene truly looks real, as if a wizard had magicked the fluffy clouds from the sky and placed them into Kara’s canvas.

“You have to say that,” Kara says, blushing.

“No, I don’t,” Alex objects. “I think these will sell wonderfully at the fair.”

“I hope so.”

“I know so.”

“Well, I don’t know how long such efforts will sustain us,” Kara mumbles, worrying her lip between her teeth. “Especially if I keep up with such an expensive hobby—”

“You’re not giving up your painting, Kara,” Alex chastises. Some of those canvases are the only memories Kara has of her childhood before her escape, before her land was ravaged by war and she alone was smuggled out by way of a supply cart from the doomed Argo City. A remarkable girl, cursed with inhuman strength. The only reason they got the harvest in as quickly as they did was thanks to Kara’s work ethic, her muscles churning with all the power of a draft horse. “We’ll be fine… the harvest looks like the best we’ve had in years.”

A decidedly optimistic statement from Alex, especially knowing what the farm’s ledgers have looked like for the past three harvest seasons. She can only impose on Henri’s good will for so long…

“And if it comes to it, there’s no shortage of men in the village willing to buy up this land. Adjacent to the stream, they’d have the mill back running in no time.”

“That would mean you selling,” Kara checks her, grimacing in distaste. “Or marrying.”

“We can’t just let the farm go to ruin.”

“But marriage? Alex, you cannot possibly think that the best course of action.”

“You know I don’t,” Alex says darkly, watching Kara fiddle with the tiny vial of pigment in her hand.

“James has offered to—”

“He lives an entire village over, Kara.”

“Well, Henri could always use another hand! Or my friend Winslow, down at the village general store? He said Madame Defarge was looking for a shop girl. I could work a few extra hours!”

“You’d never get any time to paint if you did so.”

“But I don’t tire as easily as you,” Kara argues, tucking a wayward curl back behind her ear with paint-stained fingers. There’s a glob of purple at her hairline, a tight set to her lips, a genuine desire to aid in whatever way she can. Alex smiles, squeezing Kara on the arm, and silently thanks the heavens for sending her this remarkable woman. “I heard about your scrape with the engineers, you know,” Kara pushes.

“It was not a scrape.”

“You were ordered out of their camp!”

“After I rescaled half of the village map because of the incompetence of their surveyors,” Alex says, placing her hands on her hips. “If I can’t fix the mill I’d like to make myself useful elsewhere.”

“You’ll get to it,” Kara moves around her, uncorking the tiny vial, mixing up a thick white paste on her palette. “You’re just a little… short handed.”

Alex looks out the window and down the hill toward the inoperable water wheel. Shorthanded, sure, and much too poor to pay for the necessary supplies, even if she’s had the repair schematics drawn up for years.

“We’ll make it work,” Alex says, hugging her sister close with one arm, planting a quick peck to her blonde head. “We always do.”

“Ready for dinner?” Kara asks, her attention momentarily diverted from the canvas.

“Never as ready as you are, but sure,” Alex says, turning toward the hearth.

Kara sets her supplies aside and follows.

“No, I’ll cook tonight, you finish your canvas.”

Kara smiles then hugs her tighter and Alex feels her bones start to ache. “Oh, sorry!” Kara rubs the back of her neck sheepishly. “Just… I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Likely end up as some festival attraction. Come see Kara-the-Strong of the Argo Townlands!”

“Perhaps,” Kara says wistfully, settling back on her stool and retrieving her color palette. “But I’d give up this wretched power in an instant if it would see you happy, Alex.”

“I am happy,” Alex tells her, using the iron poker to pull the kettle from over the flames.

But is she? Stuck here, for the village’s amusement, a woman who dares undermine the soldiers, who prefers instruction from blacksmiths and carpenters and mapmakers to the protracted dullness of a courtship. Who would rather spend hours reading and learning and building instead of making a fool of herself to catch the eye of a village merchant.

If people must think her odd, then so be it. As long as Kara remains safe and loved, she could take the whisperings behind her back whenever she strolled through the busier streets in town.

“Would you like for me to help you pack the cart in the morning?” Alex asks as she removes the kettle from the hearth.

“If you’re awake. I don’t want to be a bother.”

“Never you, Kara,” Alex says, wondering how bothersome their lives will be once the long winter hits.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Kara sets off with Philippe and her cartload of canvases at first light. She will travel well through the night before reaching the Artist’s Festival at the Crossroads, several villages over and very near to the borderlands.

“Three days. That’s all, Alex.”

“It will feel like a lifetime,” Alex hugs Kara closer to her. “If anything should happen—”

“Nothing will happen that I can’t take care of myself.”

“Just don’t let anyone _see_ ,” Alex whispers, despite being the sole two people awake so early near the main road.

“I don’t plan to lift Philippe overhead anytime soon,” Kara grins.

“Off with you,” Alex swats her arm.

“I love you!” Kara calls from down the road, waving over her shoulder as she nudges Philippe forward with her heels.

“Love you, too! Good luck!” Alex tells her, waiting until Kara is little more than a speck on the horizon before turning back for the farm.

She’ll be shorthanded without Kara today, but then again, she won’t have Kara to stop her from working on into the evening, either. Picking up her pace, her skirts billowing beneath her, Alex resolves to make at least a little bit of headway on the mill.

After a long day and a cool afternoon’s worth of work, Henri has forced her inside to eat. She still has several hours of daylight left, but Alex does concede that dropping to her knees from exhaustion would do neither her nor the farm much good in the long run. She oftentimes forgets to eat when she’s busy without Kara to remind her. Her long brown hair is wet from her misadventure in the stream, a sojourn taken to inspect the state of the immobile wheel sunk beneath the water’s surface. Her only pair of trousers is soaked and drying over the grate near the hearth, Alex having replaced the garment with one of her more worn skirts—the blue one, Kara’s favorite for her, with the apron over it to catch any mud kicked up from her inspections out in the fields.

A knock sounds at the front door and Alex sighs, marking the place in her borrowed book detailing the structures of windmills and their functions. If only she had the time, the equipment, the laborers—she could solve much of the village’s problems with sparse rations by improving their technology and their storage. Plenty of flour to bake the bread, even during the sparse winter months. The people of Midvale would not then be forced to entrust their futures to the dim-witted engineers sent by an uninterested governance and merchants more interested in profit than altruism. Alex moves to the spyglass contraption, looks through it, then grimaces when she sees who’s behind the door:

Monsieur Lorde.

With _flowers_.

Alex takes a fortifying breath, knowing she cannot outright ignore him. His many spies likely saw her working on the mill that very afternoon, and he will remain on her doorstep until she relents. His wealth and reputation afford him such spare time.

“Monsieur Lorde,” Alex says with a forced smile. “How can I help you?”

“You can accept these,” he replies smoothly, extending the flowers for her to take. She does, but keeps her hand on the latch beside the door. No _thank you_ slips past her lips.

“May I come in?”

“I was just going back to the fields—”

“This shouldn’t take long,” Lorde says, pushing past her into her home. “And if all goes to plan, you won’t have to worry with your fields much longer.”

“Unless you’ve fashioned a weather machine with the rest of the devices at your store, I highly doubt that.”

“You like my products, do you not? Know how useful they are?” Lorde turns to her and steps closer. Alex dances away, playing at searching for a flower pot from her meager shelves. Most of the crockery and cutlery has been requisitioned for some of her special projects in the cellar below. She never was sure why place settings at dinner demanded such detail.

“The Royal Engineers certainly do. How ever did you secure that contract?”

“Diligence, talent, a roguish smile and a wise word about business,” Lorde replies without an ounce of self-deprecation. “The Army knows a genius when they see one.”

The self-same Army that had decried Alex for her calculations that very afternoon, when the surveyors had been off their measurements by nearly fifty yards.

“Well, I’ve read about other sellers, the traveling caravans… people seem to mysteriously go out of business once they show you the slightest competition,” Alex says, snipping the ends of the flower stems with a pair of shears.

“I cannot help that I’m a successful business man, one who could do with a bit of good farmland on a stream. I could certainly have my workers take a look at your mill.”

“How kind,” Alex grits, drawing water from the pale with her ladle and arranging the flowers just-so. She’s never been one for flowers, but she’s even less interested in staring at Lorde’s smug face. “But I can repair it myself. I know how.”

“A woman like you shouldn’t have to,” Lorde says.

“A woman like me?”

“Alex, you spend all your time in the fields, kept away out here like you have something to hide. Why is it that you keep reading and working when you could be settled? Happy? Married?”

“Satisfaction is subjective, Monsieur Lorde. I certainly won’t find my happiness by _settling_.”

“You do not seem like a woman who would settle, especially with a face like yours,” Lorde tells her, placing a sweaty hand above her own. “Luckily, you don’t have to.”

“I know,” Alex says, yanking her hand out from underneath his. “I have the farm. And Kara, and my neighbors. I’m… happy.”

“You could be happier.”

“What do you know of my happiness?”

“I’m the answer to it!” Lorde says. “You and your sister would want for nothing. Of course,” Lorde again slides over to her, and Alex makes for the door. “It all depends on you.”

“What does?”

“One little word, Alex, that’s all it takes. The most beautiful woman in the village and the handsomest man in town. A farm girl, a merchant, surely you’ve considered it?”

In her most desperate moments, Alex can safely affirm she has not once considered a union with Maxwell Lorde.

“I can’t say that I—”

“Because you likely never thought the proposition would come your way. Charming, really, despite your peculiar foster-sibling. But I would put up with her, for your hand.”

Alex whirls around and pokes Lorde in the chest.

“Kara’s not… peculiar.”

“A child forced from her home after such terrible warfare? Alex, she stares at sparrows for hours. Breaks tables when she so much as stumbles,” Lorde glares. “Something is… off about her. A little wide-eyed and crazy.”

“She’s _not_ crazy, Maxwell,” Alex affirms.

“It doesn’t matter,” Max waves her off and backs Alex up against her front door. “Like I said, I’d make sure she was provided for. She could stay here, at the farm, keep the animals. I’ve always wanted a dog, but it would never work in the village shop. This land, however, would be perfect, especially for the little ones. We’ll have six or seven.”

“Little dogs?” Alex asks.

“No, strapping boys, like me. Someone to pass the shop on to. And this land, as well. Picture it! Me coming home from the village, tinkering with firearms, hands covered in oil,” Lorde leans over Alex, leering as he inches closer. “You’ll have the bread baking, my latest kill roasting over the fire, on your knees—”

“What on earth am I doing on my knees?” Alex grumbles.

“Massaging my feet after a hard day at work!” Lorde winks. “So, Alex, we’ve been dancing around the question for the better part of this visit—”

“I’m a terrible dancer—”

“Alex, will you marry me?” Max finally asks, crooking that smug grin ever higher on his stupid face.

“Maxwell, I… I just don’t deserve you!” she says hurriedly, undoing the latch and ducking underneath his arm, leaving Maxwell Lorde to fly out of her front door and straight into the muddied sty where her sow likes to lounge.

Alex hears him sputtering and raving as she shuts the door and latches it tight, then hurdles across the cottage. She escapes out the window of the loft and scurries down the tree, jogs toward the stables, leaps over chickens, troughs, the ditch nearest the meadow, and then full-out sprints through the tall grass. She doesn’t stop until she reaches the peak of the hill where she can see the countryside open up before her, wide and gaping with boundless possibility.

How could she give up the freedom to clamber out of windows and gambol of doors just to retain a semblance of security? She’s gone back and forth on the idea of marriage, should it come to that to save the farm. But never in a million years would she consider _Monsieur Lorde_. She wishes she could travel as far as the whisps of dandelions, picked up on the wind and carried to distant, mysterious places unknown. She wants to see the ocean, a desert, even those frozen walls one traveling merchant spoke of in such glorious detail. Colors dancing on sheets of mountain ice. She can hardly imagine. If she saw it, perhaps she could describe it, perhaps Kara could paint it, perhaps she could find her happiness.

Alex watches as the sun begins its golden descent over the horizon, wishing upon scattering white fuzzies of the weed plucked from beneath her.

A terrified whinny pulls her out of her thoughts from her vantage at the crest of that lovely hill.

“Philippe?” Alex’s eyebrows scrunch together when she catches sight of the cantering animal, riderless, one trace broken and splintered with the reins flapping limp behind him.

“Philippe, where’s Kara?” Alex asks, shushing the animal as he rears and flares his nostrils. She strokes his nose to calm him and takes stock of the cart: most of Kara’s canvases are still in the back, the one she’d slaved over the previous night tied securely down to the top of the pile. Straps have loosed from the tarp and as Alex inspects the rigging, her fingers find the clamped impression of an animal’s tooth puncturing the leather.

The sun will set soon, but that deep within the forest… Alex wonders how far Kara made it before the attack.

“I know you must be tired, Philippe,” Alex says, patting the animal’s quivering neck. “But we’ve got to find Kara.”


	2. The Dark Forest

It is darker than pitch within the wood. Everywhere she looks, frightful images of rough, wild beasts assault her mind’s eye. She sees Kara’s bedraggled and bloodied body left to rot beneath a tree root or bruised and aching in a cave. Philippe is more skittish than he’s ever been but Alex presses onward, clutching her thighs tightly around the saddle and gently guiding him with the lead rein. She trusts the animal’s innate sense of direction to lead her to Kara.

It should not surprise her that Philippe turned at the dismantled sign that pointed toward the Crossroads and instead plunged headfirst through the forest. This area is unknown to Kara, but she had left later than many of the other festival vendors. Perhaps Kara thought a short cut through the forest near the borderlands would save her time?

Philippe shies and prances off the forest path at a snapping sound and Alex tenses, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders as she tries to calm her mount. It is difficult to see this deep within the wood, rocky crags and decaying stumps likely to trip up even the most sure-footed steed. Kara definitely could have wrecked after an attack, even with a cart as well-maintained as her own; the wheels and axles could have easily been damaged traveling on such uneven terrain.

Alex hears the hoot of an owl and the flutter of wings overhead, a host of bats swirling about the forest branches like an angry black vortex. If only she could make out the stars in the sky, then she would know precisely where she was. Alas, the canopy is much to thick, and the terrain turning rockier, pebbles scattering with every _clop clop_ of Philippe’s hooves.

Wolves howl in chorus behind her and Philippe breaks into a nervous canter despite the treacherous angle of the path. Alex doesn’t rein him in.

Another hour passes of Alex’s frantic searching—she’s called Kara’s name so many times her throat has gone dry. She takes a sip of water from the skin and wishes she could press Philippe harder; they have traveled so quickly, galloping down the main road, far faster than Kara could have traveled with the cart behind her. Yet ever since they had passed into the forest, the pace has been slow-going. She is tiring and Philippe is flagging, panting and foaming from over twelve hour's journey first with Kara, then back to the farm, and now with Alex worriedly perched on his back.

She had been so concerned and left with such haste to start the search that Alex hadn’t packed an overnight blanket, or even food in her satchel for the morning. Alex was fine going without, but compound tonight’s worrisome tension with the day’s strenuous work in the fields, and Alex can hardly sit up in the saddle let alone keep her eyes open. She will never forgive herself if she passes by Kara and misses her, all because she is too tired to scout properly.

But then, appearing from among the trees as concretely as the boulders underfoot, she sees the curved spires and looped design of forged iron, a gate, _shelter_ , leading to the darkened courtyard of…

A mansion.

No, far larger, with towers and turrets, sculpted gargoyles, grotesques, balconies and parapets, a stone balustrade leading up the massive staircase to the giant-sized double doors.

A castle.

Alex dismounts when she sees the gate pushed ajar. The hour is late, but certainly the master of such a home would not mind one weary traveler resting her head overnight? She would be content to settle in the stable, knowing the large, ivy-like iron designs behind her would keep the forest predators shut away for the rest of the night.

“Come on, Philippe,” Alex says, forcibly dragging the trembling gelding through the gate. Alex has made it fifteen yards up the path when she hears the creak and _crash!_ of the gates shut behind her.

Philippe grunts and squeals, rearing uncertainly.

“Calm down!” Alex chides him, stroking his nose and muttering soothing assurances into his ear. “It was only the wind, you useless thing.”

She continues up the path and wonders if leaving Philippe loose will anger anyone from the castle. Alex drops the reins so that the horse will have full range of motion, but she grips him by the bridle and gives him a soft command: “No wandering about the courtyard. The last thing we need is your massive hoof prints on the castle lawn.”

Alex takes one look at the staircase and shivers. The place is so large, so grand, and so starkly unwelcoming. Where flowers should grow there are only vines. Where tapers and torches should burn there is no soft glow. And where someone should receive her in the entrance hall, there is only silence.

“Hello?” Alex asks warily, taking careful steps into the foyer. There is a single candlestick lit, three gloomy tapers burning to illuminate the massive expanse of the hall. “Is anyone here?” she tries again.

Alex pulls her hood down and grabs the candelabra, thankful for the momentary warmth it provides her palm. The echoing knock of her boots on the stone muffles to softened _thuds_. Alex stoops down to touch a lush, intricately patterned carpet; only the richest of merchants in the village have access to such detailed finery. She and Kara have made use of animal skins and second-hand pieces from their more benevolent neighbors, but never has Alex imagined walking on such fabric.

“I’m looking for my sister!” Alex calls into the void of never-ending hallways, searching for any sign of life in the still castle. “She was traveling in the woods… going to a fair!” She marches up curving staircases, down corridors lined with armored suits, opens doors to find even larger halls and passes portraits that would render Kara speechless from the patient, sure-handed talent it would take to create such works.

“Hello!” Alex calls again, her feet taking her up higher and higher, likely to one of those fearsome, spiked towers. Her ear catches a sound, a raspy rumbling up ahead, so Alex picks up her pace on the stairs. “Hello?” Alex calls again.

“Here…”

Alex emerges on a landing that opens up to a large stone room encircled by heavy oak doors, iron bars slotted into position over a square hole cut in the wood of each frame.

“Al-Alex?”

“Kara!” Alex hurries over to her sister, her long, slender artist’s fingers gripping those bars for dear life. “Kara, what… what’s happened?”

“You have to get out of here!” Kara murmurs through the bars. “It’s not safe, Alex!”

“Kara, you’re ill,” Alex tells her, taking one look at Kara’s pale, sickly complexion in the sliver of moonlight peaking through from the dungeon tower’s window. “Your hands—they’re cold as ice!”

“Go Alex, please,” Kara says.

“What of these bars?” Alex asks frantically. “Could you not—”

“They’re lead, I can’t break them. As are the hinges, the lock.”

“How is that possible? It’s as if they know—”

“You have to leave, Alex!” Kara says, coughing into the sleeve of her dress. Kara’s cloak is not nearly warm enough, far more fanciful than utilitarian. Her best design work, worn especially for the festival. A festival Kara will never attend.

“Why, what is it?” Alex places her fingers over Kara’s frigid ones, hoping her own warmth can do some good for her beloved sister. “Who has done this to you?”

“Don’t… she’s horrid!”

“Kara?”

The light from the candlestick gutters and dies, smoke curling upward against the shaft of exterior light pouring in from the high window. Alex hears something—a _bodily_ something—move around behind her.

“Who goes there?”

“W-w-what?” Alex stutters, clasping hold tighter to Kara. "Who are you?"

“The mistress of this castle. And who are you? What are you doing here?” the low voice rumbles, menacing and cruel.

“I’ve come for Kara,” Alex says, trying to catch a glimpse of the body that speaks as it moves from spot to spot, never emerging into the light.

“You can’t, Alex. She won’t let me leave.”

“She is my prisoner,” the voice says. “She was trespassing.”

Kara begins coughing again, her fingers growing no warmer no matter how tightly Alex holds them.

“Can’t you see she’s sick?” Alex says. “You can’t keep her locked up here!”

“Then she should not have trespassed! Kara knows the importance of boundaries.”

“How… how do you know…” Alex turns back to the small cut out to glimpse Kara’s ashen face, her sunken cheeks, her bereft, agonized expression. “Let me take Kara home. We’ll never trespass here again, I swear it.”

“What good are promises and words when actions reveal the contrary? I do not know you. Your words mean nothing to me.”

“Kara’s my sister,” Alex says to the disembodied voice, a woman, Alex thinks, though she makes no move to be seen. “I have to collect her… take her home and care for her.”

“This is Kara’s rightful home!”

“I will never find home with you!” Kara shouts through the bars. “Not after what you did!”

“I did my duty by my family!”

“And what family do you have now?” Kara spits back. “A cursed one! And for what? More victories? More bloodshed? It is because of _you_ that mother died!”

“Little One, you know that is not true.”

“Liar!” Kara says, slumping against the dungeon door, spent from her taxing argument.

“Stop, stop it, the both of you!” Alex cries, tugging uselessly at the metal fastening on the door. “She’s weak, please, she needs to be somewhere warm, somewhere I can take care of her—”

“I offered my hospitality, but she refused,” the voice says. “Some manners you have schooled her with since her stay in your care. Kara is _my_ family. She is no sister of yours.”

“No!” Alex rises to her feet. “You cannot claim to be any sort of family if you would keep her here against her will!”

The voice does not have an immediate reply to that, but then:

“Family or not, she still trespassed.”

“She was scared and alone in the middle of the woods!” Alex argues. “She has scratches on her arms from the wolves.”

“…wolves?”

“Yes!” Alex sneers, fuming at this woman’s disregard for someone she has the audacity to call family. “Did you not even look to her health before carting her off to this drafty dungeon?”

“I… as I said, I offered my hospitality, but she refused. I could not very well let her leave. Not after all this time.”

“She can’t stay here,” Alex keeps arguing, keeps pressing, dares to hope so that Kara can get out of here. “She needs to be somewhere comfortable, somewhere she can be taken care of.”

“If she leaves, she will never return,” the voice says. “And she will not stay with me. She told me as much herself.”

“Why should she?” Alex asks. “What allegiance does she owe to someone who would sooner lock her in a tower than tend to her wounds?”

“I am Kara’s aunt,” the voice says. “The last surviving member of her family. This estate… the remainder of her homelands. I want what is best for Kara.”

“You have an appalling way of showing it!” Alex fumes. “Kara’s family died in the Border Wars.”

“Not all of them,” the voice mutters, the flutter of a cape peeking into the singular light beam from above. “I agree that she needs care, but she will not let me provide it in my home. How can I ensure that she will return? That we may… repair our relationship.”

“Kara,” Alex looks to the tiny window, her sister slumped, shivering, bloodied, and Alex can think of only one way to make it better. She walks forward into the middle of the room, staring at the rows of cells and wondering how many skeletons are locked in the heavy shackles, bones drying and brittle, little more than ashen grey dust on the floor. “If you want her to come back, you… you could… take me instead.”

“What?”

“Alex, no!” Kara manages through another shuddering series of coughs. “You can’t!”

“And Kara will return for you?”

“She’ll need to recover first, but yes,” Alex says. “She is my sister, my family, no matter what you say. She might not want to, but… she’ll come back at the change of every season. To see that I’m still alive. To… speak with you, if she must.”

“And you will agree to remain here as my prisoner? Kara cares that much for you?”

“Yes.”

“You would be staying here indefinitely. That is the sentence for trespassing if you agree to take her place. Do you understand?”

“I…” Alex pauses, her eyes searching for the voice she’s been bargaining with, her fear of the unknown amplifying the grim possibilities in her anxious mind with every passing second. “Come into the light?”

A momentary pause, and then, the toe of one black leather boot slides into view. It’s followed by the sway of heavy, nickel-grey skirts, gloved hands, a tight purple cloak and brown leather vest and long, billowing sleeves until…

Scars.

Burns.

Unspeakable, repulsive wounds scabbed and healed over many times, surrounded by a mane of riotous brown curls with a white streak the color of water lilies, running like a ghastly slice of bone down the woman’s—if Alex dared call her a woman—jawline. The beastly form stands with rigid posture, her hands clasped tight before her and her mouth a mere jagged cut where her lips should be.

“Do we have an accord?”

Alex cannot tear her eyes away. She’s heard fairy stories of goblins and changelings, beings that seem human but beneath, are utterly rotten. Never has something so vile manifested itself into someone’s very skin. Alex wonders if this is her penance for wanting adventure, for desiring escape, for her own personal oddities. That she will be forced to reside with this demon.

Alex takes one step closer, nodding uneasily to herself, as if to display a confidence she doesn’t truly feel.

“You have my word.”

“Done,” the woman intones, darting past Alex and patting a glove-covered palm on her shoulder. Alex tenses when even the covering of the woman’s flesh touches her, hands coming to her shoulder automatically to wrap her cloak tighter around her body. The lock jangles behind her and Alex turns, mind boggled by the speed of the woman’s movements.

“Wait, wait—!”

The woman carries Kara in her arms and whispers something into her golden hair at the top of the stairs before Alex can make sense of what’s just occurred. She scrambles toward the dungeon cell to see if Kara’s left anything. She crosses the cold stone floor and stands amazed, looking out the window to see a carriage lacking horses and rolling on phantom-driven wheels. It parks at the foot of the steps outside the front of the castle, the door opening of its own volition as the woman begins the descent with Kara held tightly in her arms.

It’s impossible, Alex thinks, for this woman to have made it all the way down to the entrance hall when it took Alex so long to climb up to the tower. Her looks, her speed, her strength—all of her is nothing but barbaric, beastly, abnormal. She watches as the woman gently places Kara inside the carriage and speaks to a—is that a _floating scroll_?!

Certainly not, Alex thinks, wondering if the tears and exhaustion are wreaking havoc on her senses. She slumps against the barred window, feels the stale, mildewed crunch of straw beneath her body, and wonders if Kara will be safe. She prays Henri will find her and nurse her back to health, will take some initiative and perhaps figure out a way to remedy this dreadful situation. Alex tries not to cry but tears leak out as she leans against the dungeon wall, watching her sister roll off in the charmed carriage and into the terrible night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all like B&B as much as me and that makes me super-crazy excited!!! Thanks to everybody who gave this a chance!!!


	3. The General

Some time later, light floods the dungeon floor. The scarred woman stands with the lit candelabra in hand, a flint-lock pistol holstered at her hip. The terror-inducing image is a sharp contrast to the awkward way she shuffles her weight from foot to foot.

“You didn’t even let me say goodbye,” Alex mutters glumly, swiping at her cheeks so the woman will not have the benefit of her tears. “I had to give up my sister and you didn’t even let me tell her I loved her.”

“I…” the woman begins, her shoulders slumping from their tight position over her torso. The lights in her hand flicker and she pushes the door ajar further. “I imagine if given the option of saying goodbye, Kara would have never left.”

“What would you know about it?” Alex bites back.

“More than you can imagine,” the woman replies. “Come. I’ll… show you to your room.”

“Wait,” Alex says, gathering up her discarded cloak and moving to her knees. “Room?”

“Unless you find the dungeon a more suitable accommodation.”

“Well, no…”

“Then follow me. The hour is early.”

The woman disappears from the threshold of the cell and Alex has little choice but to scramble after her. She only just catches a glimpse of the rippling light against the wall of the winding stone staircase and has to call out.

“Wait! Slow down!”

Alex nearly bowls into the woman when she makes a tight turn on her descent. The woman steadies her with a strong grip on her elbow, an unfeeling expression plastered on marred features.

“My apologies. I am not accustomed to others following me. Let us continue,” she says, dismounting from the steps at a much more manageable pace.

There’s not much brightness aside from the three trembling flames from the candelabra, light lost in the gaping darkness of the corridors that seem to stretch three stories high. The armored suits Alex had been fascinated with upon her entry now seem violent and terrible, knowing the woman before her keeps them like battle ornaments prepared for the charge.

“The castle is your home now,” she says gravely, her tone brokering no disagreement. “I have instructed the staff attend to your mount. You may see him first light in the stables.”

“How did you know—never mind,” Alex murmurs, keeping her head down as they pass a tapestry depicting a bloody battle, the sole purpose of which might well have been to make the viewer’s stomach heave.

“There are the kitchen gardens and the greenhouses, the demesne, the courtyard, and all floors of the castle. You are allowed in all, save the west wing.”

“What’s in the west—”

“It is forbidden,” the woman snaps, turning on Alex in a flourish of fire and cloak. “That is all you need know for now.”

“Very well,” Alex replies, following the woman further and further into the darkened castle.

“You… that is… you say you and Kara are… close.”

“We’re not just close,” Alex corrects, trying desperately to keep her tone in hand. “She’s my sister.”

The woman scoffs. “Then what is your name, Kara’s sister?”

“Alex.”

“And what is it you do?”

“I manage a farm.”

“Unsurprising, given the state of your peasant hands. With your husband?”

“No. I am not married, and… really have no desire to be.”

The woman stops short before her, turning to her immediate right to curl a hand over the patterned plating of a brass doorknob. “How refreshing,” the woman says, swinging the door wide and inclining her head, allowing Alex to step inside.

“Here is your sitting room,” the woman tells her, gesturing to a room so grand it puts the entirety of Alex’s cottage to shame. “Through there are your quarters. There is a desk, an ink and quill should you wish to write Kara. Are you…" she glances once again at Alex's attire, her judgmental gaze sweeping the entirety of Alex's form. "...literate?”

“Yes,” Alex grunts.

“Good. It will save hours of tedious dictation. My servants will attend you, light your hearth fire in the morning. There is also a dresser, a chest, pretty things should you wish to wear them,” the woman sneers at her threadbare blue dress, the stained apron, and Alex can almost feel the distaste radiate from her frame. “The garments should fit you well enough.”

Alex gapes at the rugs, the gilded chairs, the floor-length drapes of heavy, expensive material she never imagined she would get the chance to see. There are doors that lead to the outside, and Alex wonders if the sitting room opens up to a balcony of some kind. She hears the wind pick up and wonders if Kara’s carriage has been dislodged in its journey. There’s no telling what a phantom footman and driver might do in those treacherous woods.

“How do you know Kara?” Alex asks, turning back to the disfigured woman. “Why is she so… why does she hate you?”

“I fought in the Border Wars with my troops to preserve our family lands. I had to make many sacrifices along the way. Not all of my family agreed with my methods.”

“Kara said her home was burned to the ground.”

“Much of the countryside was. Kara’s tragedy is not unique.”

“You… led troops in the wars?” Alex asks, unable to contain her curiosity. “You were a soldier?”

“Soldier?” the woman asks, the tightness around her mouth (or what should be her mouth) relaxing somewhat. “I was the General of a Kryptonian Legion. I commanded the troops who defended the siege at Argo City.”

“Kara said the city was taken.”

“It was.”

“And you?”

“Resigned to a lonely life, believing the family I fought for had died because of decisions I made. Kara included. You cannot blame me for wanting to keep her close by any means necessary.”

Alex doesn’t know how to address that knowledge, instead turning her attention to what little she sees before her.

“Your scars—”

“What of them?!” the woman snaps, clutching the candlestick tighter.

“Are they… are they from the war?”

Alex watches as the woman’s empty fingers tighten into a fist. The leather of her gloves squeaks as the material rubs together. “No. If it were only the injuries sustained in war, then—it is no matter,” she swoops aside and Alex bristles, thinking it patently unfair the woman should have Alex here in her home when Alex knows nothing of her.

“But what about—”

“I will not speak of this again,” the woman says, throwing open the door with a surge of temper Alex had only seen a glimmer of in her negotiations over Kara. “Goodnight, Alex.”

“Wait!”

“ _What_?”

“What do I call you?” Alex asks, standing helpless, adrift in a sea of finery that feels more like prison to her than that moldy straw up in the dungeon.

“General will suffice,” the woman replies. “You should rest. It will be dawn soon.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Rest,” she commands, and Alex wonders if anyone ever dared talk back to a General like her before. “You will… join me for breakfast in the morning,” she says, with a tone of superior finality that grates horribly against Alex’s ears.

That does it.

She’s been lost in the forest, scared out of her wits, left to bargain for the life of her only sister and then led through this ostentatious castle like she has no voice of her own. If this so-called General thinks she can command Alex like one of her former soldiers just because she agreed to take Kara’s place, then the woman has another thing coming.

“No, I don’t think I will.”

“Don’t be senseless.”

“I’m not.”

“You will sleep, you will rise, and you will clean yourself. Then you will come to breakfast,” the woman leans into her room holding the candle aloft, shadows vaulting over her abysmal features.

“I will do none of those things if I don’t want to,” Alex challenges.

“I am the Mistress of this castle!” the woman rounds on her, scarred skin pulled tight over the bones of her skull. “You will do as directed.”

“I am not in your command or yours to order, _General_ ,” Alex seethes. “I said I would stay for Kara. It doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

The woman pivots, obviously fuming, flinging the door wide and turning back to issue her final threat. “If you do not eat with me, you do not eat at all.”

“Fine!” Alex says, turning around, dropping to the settee facing nearest the window. She knows the General has not yet left her quarters, but cannot for the life of her imagine why the woman would mumble to herself for such an extended exchange.

“Must I?” she hears the General whisper to herself. And then, with a touch more delicacy, “Alex?”

_Not again._

“What?”

“It would give me great pleasure…” the General begins, though if the gravel in her voice is any indication, whatever forthcoming request is issued will not be pleasurable in the slightest, “…if you would join me for breakfast once you have rested.” Alex hears her take a deep breath. “Please.”

Alex sighs again, wondering how long it will take the General to realize she has no intention of breaking bread with her… _ever_. “No, thank you.”

Alex hears the door slam shut behind her, the General hollering at her as she likely hollered orders at her troops.

“Very well, I hope you are content to starve!”

Once the tromping echo of the General’s footsteps finally fade, Alex allows herself to come apart, her cries thankfully drowned out by the sound of the wind howling just outside her window.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“That could have gone better.”

“Really, Michèle?” Astra snaps at her sidearm, the metal of the barrel puckered together into a sour expression like the lips of a child. No one would have ever guessed the flint-lock pistol sitting upright on the table had once been Astra’s most trusted counsel during the Border Wars. “I had not noticed.”

“She’s nearly as stubborn as you are, which is certainly a feat in itself,” the decanter chimes in. Astra snatches the neck of the glassware and upends the brown liquid into a non-sentient glass. She slurps, shaken to her very core at having seen Kara once again. And still in this state, no less.

“Do you think she could be the one?” Michèle asks from his position on the table. “The one who could—”

“Of course I thought so,” Astra replies, propping Birgitte carefully atop the service cart of selected liquors. The brandy sloshes inside of Birgitte as she hobbles away, off to stare at that confounded flower once again. “As soon as I saw her speaking with Kara I knew… I knew it could be her.”

“I do hope so, Mistress,” Roberto says from his stand, twitching in the embossed scabbard. The saber pulls itself from the sheath to speak to the General with less of a mumble: “If the girl does break the enchantment, I would finally get to duel you with my arms again.”

“We need less talk of fighting and more of… strategy,” Michèle says. “General Astra, she does seem… she’s quite lovely—”

“She is beautiful,” Astra says, taking another sip of her drink, hating how the taste no longer burns or tingles, a sign that she has grown overused to the flavor. It takes many more glasses for her to reach that level of carelessness where she can look herself in the mirror without shuddering. “She is beautiful and brave and irritating as a hornet. Some farm girl who will have nothing to do with me.”

“If you stopped treating her like one of your soldiers you might have more luck,” Birgitte says.

“I asked politely as Michèle instructed,” Astra snaps, thumbing over toward the gun resting against the table. “She still declined.”

“She just lost her sister, General,” Michèle says. “It cannot be so easy—”

“I’ve not seen my niece in nearly ten years and the first thing she does is spit in my face,” Astra barks. “Kara wants nothing to do with me, and neither will her sister.”

“You can’t think like that,” Roberto says. “Not if you intend to woo her.”

“Who said anything about wooing?” Astra chuckles humorlessly. “I would settle for a civilized conversation, the likes of which I will never have with you three.”

“Give her time,” Birgitte advises. “Everything is new to her now. You saw her hands, heard some of her story. She is a mere village girl, and you are a General from the Royal Courts of Argo City. The castle is new, the dungeon cold. That is much for her to adjust to in such a short time.”

“But time is not on our side,” Michèle mutters. “If she’s the one to break the spell—”

“We will all know soon enough,” Astra says, finishing off her drink. She rises, crossing toward the sparkling rose encased in the glass, the drooping petals blood-red and glowing. Astra removes her glove and runs the scarred remnants of her fingers over the curved glass casing, wishing Alura were here to advise her. This is not a battle in which her strength will aid her.

Astra turns from the casing and picks up the enchanted mirror. “Show her to me,” Astra whispers. “Show me Alex.”

The mirror flares to life, glimmering green at the edges and rippling into pointed focus to find Alex, curled in on herself, staring listlessly out the window despite Astra’s order for rest. She twists and turns on the settee, her eyes roving the interior of the sitting room as if looking for some means of escape.

Certainly a woman who wishes to get by on stubbornness instead of sense.

“Birgitte, go to her,” Astra commands. “She looks as if she could use a drink much more than I.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“And you two…” Astra mumbles toward her first counsel and cavalry leader, cursed to states of the weaponry they once favored as strong, human men. Astra sighs. “I will take whatever suggestions you have.”

“My first suggestion is not to listen to a word Roberto says, unless you wish to be slapped, General,” Michèle jokes, popping to attention before her.

“You’ll get a lot farther with the girl a lot quicker if you listen to me, General,” Roberto returns, nudging Michèle’s handle with his hilt. “The first suggestion is not to threaten her with starvation. That certainly helps.”

“She was being _difficult_ ,” Astra argues.

“She was being imprisoned. You’ve dealt with difficult prisoners before,” Michèle says.

“True. I will… try.”

“That’s the spirit!” Roberto says. “Listen to me General, and we’ll have her swooning in your arms by tomorrow’s sundown.”

Astra takes another look at the sad, resilient woman lying limply on the couch in the sitting room back in the east wing.

“Somehow I doubt that, Roberto,” Astra says. “Somehow… I do not think I would want her to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> generals don't need candles and tea and clocks they need guns and liquor and sabers hahaha meet the OCs that i've... wait for it... OBJECTIFIED *laughs forever*


	4. The Enchanted Castle

Alex stirs from her position on the settee when the knock sounds. She hardly has the heart to answer, but was told the servants would be by to light the fires near dawn. Alex can't believe the night has ended so soon.

“Who is it?”

“Birgitte, dear. I’ve a drop of brandy, if you’d like some?”

“Oh, yes,” Alex says, wondering if she should be as excited as she is about getting her hands on liquor. And if the stores are anything like the castle itself, the drink would be much better than the mead and swill they serve in the village tavern. Kara doesn’t like alcohol, and it is an unnecessary expense, so Alex only imbibes on the rare occasion. But when she does… well, no one could ever accuse Alex of being dull at a party.

Alex opens the door and in shoots a service tray, rolling again on those strange phantom wheels.

“Hello?” Alex calls out into the hall. “Birgitte?”

“Over here, dear,” Birgitte says, and Alex turns quickly back to the sitting area.

“Birgitte? Where—”

“On the tray with the rest of the glassware,” Alex hears, her eyes dropping down to see the glasses and the decanter scuttling about, as if moving of their own accord.

“What… how…!”

“Unfortunate magic,” the glass decanter says. “Nothing to fret over.”

“You’re a serving tray!”

“I’m a wine decanter, thank you very much,” Birgitte answers, the vessel full of dark liquor twisting on its base and rocking towards her as if it could sprout legs and leap upon her head. “I was once the best sommelier in all of France, though that doesn’t stop General Headstrong from filling me up with whatever hard drink she fancies for her evenings.”

“You work for the General?”

“Yes, of course,” Birgitte says, popping up to tip her neck over the edge of a glass. “How much, dear?”

“If I keep speaking with you like this, I may very well drink everything you’ve got inside you.”

“Oh, ho! I wouldn’t advise that this early, though you have had quite the eventful night.”

Alex slumps into a sitting chair and folds her hands across her lap, observing the twisting and turning glassware, the legs of the tray, the wheels, the gilded floral filigree molded against the corners.

“There now, drink up,” Birgitte advises. “Perhaps then your hands will stop shaking.”

“No guarantees,” Alex answers, taking her drink. “Santé,” she toasts the glass, takes a hearty swallow, then summarily coughs like she’s never had a slurp of alcohol before in her life.

“Oh, not a drinker are we?” Birgitte asks.

Alex smacks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “That tastes like tar.”

“The Genovian Grand Duchess keeps that stock in her personal cabinet at all times.”

“Well, there’s no accounting for taste,” Alex says, feeling just a touch less jittery than before.

“Quite the refined palette we’re working with, I see,” Birgitte returns.

“Is the whole castle like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like you?” Alex asks, wondering how to phrase the question. “She said her staff would attend to me. Does that mean you’re all… things?”

“I told you, a bad bit of magic gone wrong. We’re all here to make you comfortable, though. Soon enough this will feel like home.”

“This is no home,” Alex says, forcing another swallow past her lips. “No matter how many carpets and pretty gold furnishings and… fancy liquors she plies me with, I’ll never be home here.”

“I know she is not the easiest person to deal with—”

“Repugnant isn’t strong enough a word. She was going to leave Kara in the dungeon while she was sick!”

“You and I both know that Kara is strong enough to break out of any of these rooms,” Birgitte levels her with a (glassy) stare. “The only place in the castle with lead locks and bolts was the tower.”

“How do you know about the exception with the lead?” Alex asks.

“Let’s just say certain traits run in the family,” Birgitte explains, twisting toward the window. “The General had the lead locks installed should she ever try to harm herse—well, it has not yet been used. Not until this night, anyway.” The howling wind from outside the windows has quieted, the sky colored a lovely lavender now that morning has broken. “Come, let’s see your view.”

The cart rolls toward the threshold of the bedroom doors and bonks against them once. The doors open to the outside, two grand pieces of carved woodwork with real glass panes and hand-crafted moldings along the edges. Alex steps out from her room and onto the balcony, catching her breath.

The view is magnificent.

She overlooks the gardens and much of the castle grounds, leafy trees changing to fire-colored yellows and oranges brought on by the first morning chill of autumn. Further out, she sees the beginnings of a path that dives into the forest, evergreen branches entwined as far as the eye can see, leading up to the first mountain peak. Turning to her left she walks south, noting that the balcony loops the corner so that she can make out both the east-facing grounds and the south-facing main entrance. Should any visitors arrive or attempt to sneak in through the forest, Alex will know. The General’s precious west wing juts up against the edge of that treacherous cliff above the river that feeds the lake, a view Alex is thankful she doesn’t share. The windows will help her wake up with the sun and establish some semblance of routine, as was her custom back at the farm.

She takes the last swig of her drink and resolves to begin afresh the following morning. After her terrible first exchange with the General, Alex has no desire to go groveling back to the woman before regaining her wits with some sleep. She sees the lake sparkling roughly a mile to the northeast, the path leading down to its banks overgrown and unkempt.

Perhaps that will be her first project. She imagines she will take on many to keep from going mad from boredom, never mind loneliness, in this curiously enchanted castle.

“Birgitte?” Alex asks, turning to see the tray roll over the ledge and onto the balcony.

“Yes?”

“I think I would very much like to sleep now.”

Alex can’t tell for certain, but it seems as if the glass of Birgitte’s form is expanding, broadening into a sad smile. “Very good, Alex. I’ll see that you are not disturbed. Should I tell the mistress you will not be joining her this morning?”

“I think she’ll be able to gather that for herself when I don’t come down,” Alex says. “Though maybe… perhaps you could wake me this afternoon? I would like to get a sense of where I’ll be staying for… however long I’m staying for.”

“Certainly, my dear.”

And with that, Birgitte rolls her way across the sitting room and exits, the door shutting behind her.

Alex almost wishes she could have another drink to forget the insanity which now seems to be her life. She passes into the sleeping quarters and of course… it’s beautiful. A canopied bed with thick, heavy curtains hung about the frame to keep even the tiniest sliver of light out. Gorgeous linens, large mirrors, beautiful baubles and charms turned just-so atop furniture designed by skilled carpenters. The morning sun streams through the windows and the rays stretch across the high ceilings, crafted by artisans of the most revered talent; there are tapestries and portraits hung on the walls, all created with pain-staking detail. All for her pleasure. All there to make the room feel more welcoming.

Despite the drink, the hearth fire lit by some sentient object, and the sun finally rising over the mountain, Alex has never felt colder. She draws the floor-length drapes closed and collapses onto the bed, crying herself to sleep for the first time since her parents died.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The forthcoming weeks grow cold as Alex’s heart.

Autumn attacks with the ferocity of an army, leaves swirling, frost biting, evenings growing darker earlier and earlier. Though the enchanted objects of the castle provided some distraction during the first fortnight, their novelty has since worn thin. Alex finds it difficult to stomach the General’s watchful eye as she surveys her domain, her interest turned toward Alex every time she makes a move. Alex has endured several unfortunate run-ins with her guardian since the argument on her first evening, and has participated in stilted, awkward conversations in which the General invariably insults her intelligence, snips at her questions, or threatens her with some menial chore. To which Alex will turn on her heel with a roll of her eyes, finding some relief from the tedium by taking a walk down to the lake.

The General has yet to apologize for her behavior.

Alex has been granted the privilege of writing to Henri and Kara, and is both gratified and concerned by Kara’s recovering health.

_She will work herself back to sickness if she continues laboring in the fields past nightfall,_ Henri writes. _Without you to watch over her, she makes more use of her strength than she should. I am afraid that she might draw the attention of the village, but_ _Kara fears the frosts will take more of the crop than you can afford to lose. She struggles without your help, and has had to request aid from her friend James. She works hard, Alex, but misses you terribly. As do I._

With the difficult harvest season upon them, Kara must no longer have time to paint, Alex thinks. It is not the type of news she wanted from this week’s correspondence.

Alex grunts distractedly as she tucks the letter away into her skirts. The burden of the harvest had always fallen to her shoulders, though Kara is more than capable. But it was a burden they gladly shared, strengthening a bond already closely knit by mutual loss. Her times with Kara in the fields at dawn, midday, and twilight are moments she’ll not soon forget, even if she’s living a life as far from the fields as she’s ever been.

Alex tugs her cloak tighter around her when the wind off the lake kicks up, stirring the foam along the pebbly forest shores. Leaves fall and litter the glassy surface with color. Pine needles crunch underfoot and the smell of cold lingers in the forest behind her. When she finally reaches her favorite boulder she deflates, primarily because the General has beat her to it.

“Will you join me?” the General asks, indicating a space beside her on the overlarge rock. Alex doesn’t respond, just stares resolutely at the lake’s edge. She has to remain here but that doesn’t mean she has to play nice with her captor.

“I assumed as much,” the General says, tossing a flattened rock across the lake, the stone skipping one-two-three—wait, _nine_ times before skidding to a halt on the opposite shore. Alex turns toward the General, keeping her mouth closed and her expression smooth no matter how astonished she is.

“I notice you like to keep busy,” the General begins.

“Yes, we can’t all remain aloof and brooding, can we?”

The General picks up another stone, turning it in her hands.

“The path here…” she starts, staring aimlessly between the lake and the rock. “It is clear now.”

“Was it your time in the military that honed such astute powers of observation?” Alex says snidely.

“I have forgotten how calming these shores can be.”

“You would need it.”

“Why must you irritate me so?” she asks, chucking the rock into the water. It plops, and the ripples disrupt the otherwise smooth surface. “I am _trying_.”

“Trying?” Alex rounds on her. “You’re holding me hostage. No amount of trying will make up for the fact that you took me away from my life and are using me as leverage against my sister. She’s exhausted, by the way, if you even cared to know.”

“Of course I care,” the General spits back. “Your neighbor nursed her back to health weeks ago. I sent for more supplies when your letters said—”

“You’ve been reading my letters?” Alex turns to face the woman sitting on the rock, clad in calf high boots, trousers, some embroidered tunic and her brown leather vest. Those gloves are buttoned and clasped tightly around the General’s wrists, probably to hide the vile collection of skin and scar tissue on her hands. There’s a sword strapped to her side, some lethal weapon the General probably wields as an intimidation tactic. Not that she would need to intimidate Alex when she could instead spy on her.

Alex has written of a vague interest in the enchantments of the place and her near-routine, trying to put up a good front for Kara, especially if this hostage negotiation compels Kara to return once the cold sets in fully. Their reunion will fall near Christmastide, though Alex cannot imagine sharing the customary joy she associates with such an occasion with the menacing woman sitting stiffly on the rock.

“I have nothing here save my correspondence, and you withhold even that from me.”

“I have given you everything to make you comfortable!” the General counters. “You refuse my hospitality and remain obstinate no matter what I attempt.”

“Because you treat me like a chambermaid.”

“I treat you in such a manner as you deserve. Such stubbornness would be broken within the initial weeks of training for any civilized person.”

“There! Just like that!” Alex accuses. “You disparage my actions and remain the most inhospitable, insulting, abhorrent woman I’ve ever met!” Alex shouts. “You comment on my face, my hands, my clothes—”

“You have closets full of dresses, yet you still prefer that mangled scrap of—”

“Because it’s _mine_!” Alex shouts. “Not some pittance for behaving myself. I work and I use my hands because these calluses are _mine_ , I’ve earned them, back at my home. I understand that war is terrible and you’ve had a rough go of it, but that is no reason to wage war against Kara or me.”

The General stands abruptly, leaping down from the rock, clenching her mutilated jaw as she stalks toward Alex.

Alex widens her stance, as if prepared to flee or strike. She doesn’t know if she’d get away with either, seeing the rage stamped on this woman’s face. But then the General stops, forcibly halts in her tracks, working her jaw loose and shutting her eyes to maintain some semblance of calm.

“I… apologize,” she mutters. “I understand that nothing I do here will be adequate for you, but this is the only way I know how to negotiate.”

The General approaches her with less evident ire, holding one hand atop the hilt of the rapier at her side.

“You have met Roberto, have you not?” she inquires.

“Yes,” Alex states, thinking about the shameless floating sword with the bizarre crest embossed on his hilt.

“He will train you, if you wish,” the General says, unbuckling the sheath strapped to her waist and handing the weapon over. “So that you may keep busy, Alex.”

Alex locks eyes with the slits the General always keeps trained on her. She wonders, sometimes, what color those eyes might have been before war had drained all the life from them. Alex reaches out with a tentative hand to take the surprisingly heavy sword, turning when she hears Roberto’s booming baritone singing some bawdy tune from across the lake.

“Perhaps when you finish, you may tell me how you and Kara grew close?” the General asks, but Alex keeps her gaze trained on the non-sentient sword. She wonders if the woman is giving her a _weapon_ as a peace offering, astounded by the implicit contradictions. Why would her captor give her something that she could fight with? Was it a challenge? A test? What game could the woman be playing at?

“Good day, Alex,” the General says, sidestepping Alex’s tensed body and taking the path back to the castle. It is only when Roberto arrives, whistling nonsensically, that Alex realizes her hands are shaking.

“Are you well, Miss Alexandra?” Roberto asks, slashing at the air before him.

“Yes,” Alex lies, removing the sword from its sheath, a strange crest carved into the steel near the hand guard. It looks… similar to something Alex has seen before, though she cannot place it. “Was your mistress an accomplished swordswoman during the war?” Alex asks.

“Not particularly,” Roberto says. “That is why she had me.”

“Then…” Alex looks back at the gold-plated hilt in hand. “Why does she have this?”

“She can wield a sword, do not mistake me,” Roberto says. “But her specialties came with the dagger and pistol, strategy, hand-to-hand combat. But I imagine she gave that to you because she knows you are frightened.”

“I’m not frightened.”

“You are a dirty liar then,” Roberto says, bobbing in the air before the lake as if being handled by the hand of a poltergeist. “She looks scary. It is reasonable that you should fear her.”

“I’m not afraid of the way she looks,” Alex says, fitting her grip as she’s seen the participants do during the occasional exhibitionist bouts in the village. “I’m afraid of the way she _acts_.”

“Then perhaps you best arm yourself with your own action,” Roberto responds, waiting for Alex to give him a nod of admission. “Very good, Alexandra, now, widen your stance, and prepare to lunge. En garde!”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Alex avoids the General for two more days. She is sore as she’s never been before, learning to lunge, parry, strike and slice, all under Roberto’s expert tutelage. He calls her a natural, something about her farm girl muscles being put to better use with a blade as opposed to a scythe and plow.

But just as Alex was beginning to feel if not comfortable, then content, the weather decides to upset her schedule. It rains all day. From sunrise well into the afternoon, streaks of lightning flash across the sky and thunder rebounds off the mountains. The balcony she stood upon every morning at sunrise is flooded and impossible to navigate, what with the gargoyles’ open mouths raining all of the collected water from the level above directly onto her head.

So, Alex decides that an off-day from amateur swordsmanship can best be spent discovering the interior spaces she has not yet investigated. The south wing is hers in its entirety, every room gone over and peeked into from her second day in the castle. There’s one golden room with an expansive wardrobe that she finds most intriguing; a blue bedspread, red curtains, and several talismans with an unusual _S_ carved into the pendants. She had asked Birgitte about it over a glass of Bordeaux one evening and the decanter had shrugged (in a way that only an alcoholic dispenser can shrug) and had told her that the golden room had once been the General’s sister’s.

_Queen Alura Andrina Inze Zorel_.

She died during the wars, and the General has not set foot in the room since.

Alex wonders at that, putting the room on her list for further investigation at a later date. She had wanted to send something to Kara, a trinket, perhaps a signet ring with that curving _S_ carved atop it. But knowing that the General goes through her letters gives her pause; Alex would not like to be caught stealing from the woman.

In the north hall, Alex hits the second-best jackpot she’s found since her arrival: the library (the first was the wine cellar). She knew a castle of this size had to keep a sizeable collection, but she never imagined it would be this big. There are shelves upon cases upon floors of books, lined from floor to roof, a mural of cherubim and cloudy stallions dancing over the domed ceiling. She practically sprints to the engineering section, thankful to see not just several rows, but entire _cases_ dedicated to astronomy, engineering, agriculture, aquatic studies, geography, climatology. She scans title after title (in more languages than she even knew existed!) and finally stumbles across one in Dutch detailing the architectural schematics and inner workings of the windmills. Perhaps she can ask Michèle if there is a French translation somewhere among the stacks and stacks of novels.

Alex settles upon a cozy-looking chair of emerald velveteen and thumbs toward the first page, eager to devour and make note of all the suggestions.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

It is hours later when she hears the humming. The General is in a fine maroon dress today, that wild cloud of hair still tangled and swirling about her head. She slinks among the shelves to the tune of her hummed song, something Alex could never have pictured the woman doing. She mutters to herself as she ambles down the stacks, poking each book on its spine.

“No,” _poke_. “No,” _poke_. “No, no, no, no, no, ah, there you are,” she says, pulling a hard-backed tome from the collection and flipping to the index with practiced ease. Her humming continues as she makes her way across the floor, directly toward the sitting chairs, directly toward… where Alex is sitting.

Best to play dumb and pretend she didn’t hear her?

Best to clear her throat, and avoid the strained, self-conscious speech the General will undoubtedly deliver?

Best to feign sleep?

Alex hunkers down over her title and avoids eye contact for as long as she can.

“Alex?”

“General,” Alex turns her gaze up toward the woman who is standing stiffly, the book held in hand like some sort of shield.

“You are… reading,” she says. “Obviously,” she mutters under her breath.

Why is it that every interaction feels so wooden? So painfully contrived?

“Plodding along,” Alex says. “My Dutch is a little rusty.”

“What title?”

“ _Dikes, Dams, and Other Modern Advancements_ ,” Alex answers.

“You have French, what of English? Or… German? I think I have the same title in those languages.”

“My German is better than my Dutch, and both are far better than my English,” Alex says.

“Right, yes… I will just… get that for you then,” the General says.

“There’s no rush,” Alex says, hoping her response doesn’t give the woman any reason to linger. “I mean, the rain doesn’t look to stop any time soon.”

“Yes, uhm…” the General looks down at her book, at Alex sprawled in the chair, and then over to the lounge seat across from her. “Mind if I join you?”

“It’s your castle,” Alex mumbles, returning to the measurements page for the vanes.

They sit in silence and read for over an hour before Alex tires of puzzling out words she doesn’t know. Alex doesn’t say goodbye when she leaves the General to her book, but does lock eyes with the General once she glances back over her shoulder as she exits the library. Alex turns away and hurries down the corridor, berating herself for getting caught taking a second look. Then again… the General had most certainly been looking back at her as well.


	5. The Wolves

If Alex is going to do this, she had better do it now.

It is almost dinnertime, and the General, ever militaristic, takes her meals at the exact same hour every day. Alex removes her boots and hides them behind a suit of armor as she pushes into the west wing, hoping to keep quiet on her feet and not track mud in with her “shoddy wage-laborer boots”.

The entrance is like much else of the castle, regal, somewhat dark, gloomy, but then…

Alex pauses as a chill shoots down her body.

She can tell why the General keeps the place off-limits. There are bullet holes in some of the walls where the tapestries once hung, now lying crumpled and dusty on the floors. Immense curtains have been slashed, as if someone had taken a blade down the center of the fabric. Dust covers every surface and rubble crunches beneath her feet. Suits of armor pile up like metal rubbish, terrible weapons litter various rooms and annexes. It feels almost like some torture chamber.

Pushing through the large pair of double doors at the end of the hallway, Alex gasps.

The General’s room.

Sheets and drapes have been torn and shredded, furniture upended, debris littering the floor all around her. Alex steps closer to one of the mahogany armoires and winces, sucking in a sibilant breath at the pain in her heel.

She places her hand on the dusty table top to steady herself as she lifts her foot up to find a shard of glass as large as her palm partially embedded in her foot. And then, she takes a good look at the floor.

Glass. Glass _everywhere_.

Setting aside her boots for stealth had been a very, very bad idea. She bites her lip and yanks the piece out cleanly, picking her way over the floor to a clearer portion of stone. Alex looks up from the pile of glass, noting that one or two shards still remain in the frame. She sees the glint of the rising moon shining off something in the far corner. More glass. And on her way to the far end of the chamber, she discovers yet another pile, broken into crumbled bits and left hazardously on the floor.

_Every mirror in the room has been shattered._

Alex keeps snooping, finding firearms, long bows, large sabers and a collection of shiny medals all tossed in a corner, all hidden beneath a thick layer of grime. Above the pitiful collection of weaponry and military awards hangs yet another ruined portrait, part of the canvas flapped over so that the dust obscures the subject.

Alex lifts that portion of the shredded canvas and can just make out eyes the color of fields in springtime. A woman, stern, proud, gorgeous, glittering in medallions and a silver tiara, stares back at her from beneath a layer of aged grime. Alex drops the canvas again for fear of lingering too long, but she thinks she recognizes the tense clutch of that sharp jaw line, the regal dip of those cheekbones.

In the middle of the room stands a table, the only one that hasn’t been overturned. Atop it rests a mirror, the only one that hasn’t been shattered. And beside the mirror, suspended in the air by charm or enchantment, is a wilting red rose, the only item in the room that hasn’t been torn to shreds. Several of the petals have fallen from the blossom, but the rose still seems to be _glowing_.

Alex is cautious, taking care as she removes the glass casing and sets it beneath her on the floor. The last thing she needs is to knock it off the table and add more shattered glass to the ground. But the rose is incontestably magical, possessing a hypnotic draw like nothing else within the castle has. Alex extends her hand, her fingers flexing, wondering if she can pluck the shining rose from its position—

The glass case snaps back into place, nearly taking her finger off.

The General stands before her illuminated by the glow of the rose, that red flush on her scarred face looking like a blush of blood in the dimness of the room.

“What are you doing here?!” she sneers.

“Nothing, I—I was just—”

“The west wing is forbidden. Are you so thick that you cannot comprehend simple instruction?” the General rounds the table and Alex backs away, stumbling over an overturned footstool.

“I didn’t mean to upset anything, I just saw the rose and—”

“Get out!” the General yells, stepping forward and crunching the leg of a nightstand under the force of her booted foot. She kicks the offending piece of furniture out of the way and it sails across the room. “Get out of here!”

Alex backs away and feels another pinch in her foot, wondering if the shard of glass has pierced her flesh as deeply as her fear of the other woman has pierced her senses. She flails as she hears the General shout, the sounds of mayhem and destruction hot on her heels. There will not be much left of that room behind her, as there is not much left of the woman with the beautiful green eyes.

Alex bypasses Roberto in the hallway as she flies down the southern corridor, hobbling with her boots in hand, returning only for her cloak and little else.

“What’s happened? Alex, what’s—”

“I can’t stay here any longer!” Alex cries, throwing the mantle over her shoulders and taking one quick look at her foot. She plucks the glass from the skin but the wound is deep, painful, and Alex has to clamp down on her teeth to keep from crying out. “Promise or no promise, I’m leaving.”

“Please stay,” Roberto tries. “It can’t be—”

“She’s terrible! I can’t live like this,” Alex manages, shoving her boots on no matter how sharp the pain.

Moments later, she has Philippe saddled and galloping across the bridge and into a rain chilled to sleet, not caring if she ever glimpses that abysmal castle again.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The forest is worse in the cold. When she’d made her way to find Kara that first night almost a month ago, fall had only just begun. Now, in the darkness, with the trees to lock in the frigid temperatures, Alex can see patches of ground frozen over. Sleet stings at her eyes and pelts poor Philippe’s body as they stagger through wood and clearing, Alex pushing her mount to his fastest speed despite the terrible conditions. She lost sight of the castle through the trees some time ago and can never be grateful enough, frantic as she felt seeing those odious burns and that hateful stare directed her way.

Philippe hurdles over a stream and grunts against the pull on his reins. Alex is trying to let him have his head, but the low-hanging branches and closely-knit trees call for some direction at her hand. She’s leading Philippe through a treacherous stretch of ice and root when she sees them, high on the ridge to her left, eyes glowing in the moonlight.

_Wolves._

She turns Philippe down the slope and presses him into this fastest gallop, heedless of the brambles and limbs that could deck her at any moment. She tucks her head low as they burst into a clearing, only for Philippe to rear skyward so abruptly he unseats her and she falls into a patch of ice and collecting snow deposits. The horse titters behind her, squealing his fear into the darkness. And soon the wolves burst through, not just the pair but five of them, yelping and growling with their jaws as powerful as the grinding mills Alex had been reading about only hours ago.

Had it truly only been that afternoon when she’d discovered the library?

One wolf lunges at her skirts and she dodges, finding a snapped branch near the tree line. Its heft is substantial enough to wield like the sword Roberto had been training her with. There is no blade, and there is no handle, so she can do little else besides stand between herself and Philippe and fend off the chomping jaws, the paws as large as her face. Fear cannot overwhelm her, for she has too much to do: position herself between the wolves and the horse; lift the branch over her shoulder; aim, pray, hope. She connects solidly with the skull of one wolf but they’ve begun attacking simultaneously. While the large red-brown one whimpers from her hit, the dark grey one takes a mouthful of her skirts, pulling and ripping the fabric as she struggles, Philippe screaming all the while.

The grey wolf tugs and spats out her bundle of skirt then lunges again, stopped only by Alex’s sharp swing. But there’s little help for her now, the large black beast and its pack baying like savage monsters as they all seem to lunge as one. Her heart stalls in her chest and her thoughts turn to Kara. The wolves seem suspended in the air before her, everything turned to slow-motion in her final moments.

But then, the beasts are all summarily knocked to the icy earth beneath them by a shadow with the speed of lightning.

Everything happens so quickly:

All at once there’s a wolf near her bleeding ankle and a stick in her hand and a flash of scarred skin hurtling toward two of the larger members of the pack. Dull thuds and yelps sound over the staggering breaths that Alex takes as she attempts to orient herself, standing shakily but propping the large stick atop her shoulder. She connects once more with the skull of a tan wolf that has a smear of blood caked to its side. The wolf whimpers and slinks away, allowing Alex to see the melee occurring in the moon’s spotlight.

There stands the General, her maroon dress shredded by razor-like claws, holding two of the massive wolves by their throats and squeezing until the animals’ eyes begin to bulge. She’s yelling or roaring, her sound on par with the pack’s, a halo of disturbed earth and ice pocked with deep divots beneath her.

Another wolf charges her and she tosses the one in her left hand against it with strength Alex has never seen, strength that even Kara could not match. When two more lunge at her simultaneously, she dashes away with inhuman speed. And finally, when the largest wolf, the darkest, with teeming black eyes and bloody saliva dripping from its lips, when it charges, the General purses her lips and ice crystals float around him, hampering the wolf’s path until one large, pointed icicle slices through the air and impales the wolf’s skull.

With the alpha twitching in a bloodied mess of fur and fluid in the mud, the pack retreats, yelping and whimpering as they lick their wounds. Alex shares the briefest glance with the General, blood on her hands and chest. Her clothes are ripped, eyes rolling back in her head… until her whole body collapses on the ice, her breath steaming in large clouds of frigid white vapor. She lies motionless as Alex scrabbles to check on the wild horse and calm her rapidly pounding heart. It might be easier knowing the attackers are well and truly done for.

Alex limps nearer the dead wolf, poking at it with her stick for safety’s sake. She does the same to the General, but the woman doesn’t stir.

Alex turns, conflicted, and spends the better part of ten minutes corralling the skittish Philippe near the tree line before finally getting her hands on his reins. She’s prepared to mount, to ride away, to never return to the hell this night has been.

But something stops her: the cold, the wind, perhaps some minor guilt. She double-takes at what’s left of the General, little more than a heap of blister and bone in the cold.

And, as if Alex hasn’t made enough stupid decisions over the past four weeks, she pulls her horse over to the unconscious woman on the ground and begins brainstorming ideas as to how to get her slung over Philippe’s back.


	6. The Truce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two chapter update just cuz i appreciate y'all for reading! don't miss chap 5 :D

Birgitte’s drink isn’t nearly strong enough.

She’s served whiskey from a country further north, but Alex is on glass number two and her hands are still trembling, though the injury in her foot has dulled to a distant, yet persistent ache.

Some of the larger mobile furniture pieces had helped Alex move the General’s body into the drawing room where Alex had set about starting a fire as the sewing kit (which was apparently a medic the General had once kept on staff?) called for various items: hot water, cleans towels, a change of clothes, vials of medicinal herbs and strong alcohol (some to drink and some to disinfect). The sewing kit talked Alex through the process of mortar and pestle crushing, mixing, applying, all while the General lay unconscious and bloodied atop one of the lush sofas in the castle.

Alex had cut through the General’s ruined clothing with a pair of medical scissors, thankful the woman hadn’t sustained any injuries to her torso that would require her to remove the General’s undergarments. As Alex set aside the sleeves, the gloves, the leggings and the bodice, she saw why the General kept so covered up: her entire body was as scarred as her face. Alex wiped carefully at the dried blood on the woman’s arms, mistaking a discolored bit of skin for an injury more than once. The scars were truly awful, layered atop each other as they were; no human should have been able to sustain that type of damage and lived for others to see it.

But, as Alex was discovering daily, the General was unlike any other human she’d ever met.

“—the water supply in the southern camp,” the General mumbles in her sleep.

“Rations enough to sustain the legions, General,” Alex answers, dipping her cloth into the ceramic bowl on the table beside her, returning the compress to the woman’s shredded bicep. She'd already patched up much of the bite on the woman's leg, but this arm injury was rather extensive: raked flesh and pinky muscle, it's a wonder the woman doesn't need stitches.

“What?”

“I’m afraid you’re miles away from the battlefield,” Alex replies, waiting for the General to regain her lucidity.

She moves to swipe at the General’s bicep but stops short, her hand held hostage in the General’s strong grip.

“What now?” Alex huffs.

“You are…” Alex watches as the General’s head tilts down her body, taking in Alex knelt down by the couch side, the cloth in her hand, her own reclining state. The General is quiet when she continues. “You are still here.”

Alex looks to the slits at the top of the General’s face. “So it would seem.”

“It… hurts.”

“Probably because you’re using your injured arm to restrain me. Now stop it,” Alex chides, prying those fingers off of her hand. She swipes again at the General’s arm with the medicine-soaked towel and the woman grimaces from her position on the couch.

“What? That can’t hurt, surely.”

“Try having concentrated alcohol poured into _your_ open wound,” she snaps.

“I have in the past, and I certainly didn’t make this much of a fuss,” Alex continues, perhaps a little rougher than necessary. “Honestly, you’d think you’d be used to it by now.”

“Why is that?” the General asks. “Because I am so terrible I must surely appreciate some wicked self-torture?”

“Because you look like you’ve had more than a few treated injuries, you stubborn little…”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Alex says, opening the vial of mixed solutions from the sewing kit, wondering if it will function as panacea for the General’s insufferable attitude. “Can you sit up?”

“Yes.” The General does so, with a pointed amount of bellyaching.

“Alright, here we go—” Alex says, applying the cloth with the medicine sprinkled on top of it.

“Ah!!! Damn, what are you doing!” the General shouts, grabbing her wrist and flinging it away from the open wound on her injured arm.

“I’m trying to treat your wound!” Alex moves back into the General’s face, refusing to give up ground this time. The General fumes right back at her.

“You do so with the smoothness of a pinecone!”

“I’m not a doctor, but if you stopped moving it wouldn’t hurt as much!”

“It would not hurt at all if you had never fled the property in the rain like some imbecile with a death wish!”

“I wouldn’t have run away if you hadn’t scared me half to death!” Alex shouts.

“I—humph,” the General relents, retreating from the mere inches she’d put between hers and Alex’s face. “If you had just followed the rules in the first place…” she grumbles.

“My impulses are hardly a problem compared to a temperament like yours. What is it with you and trespassing?” Alex asks, dipping the cloth in the basin again, wondering if the heat will distract from the pain. “Okay, listen, I’m giving you fair warning. This is going to sting…” she presses the cloth against the General’s arm and grinds down on her teeth, hoping the action doesn’t poke the General’s wild temper with a stick as Alex had done to those wolves.

The General grimaces and hisses, scrunching her face up even more than it already is.

“Places are sacred,” is all she offers by way of explanation.

“Not sacred enough to hurt people over,” Alex retorts.

“Would you not attack someone laying siege to your home?” the General asks. “Has someone ever come into your house uninvited, and did you do everything within your power to lock them away, to keep them from violating you like that again?”

“I’d lock them _out_ , not lock them _up_ ,” Alex argues, focusing on one of the deeper gashes on the General’s well-muscled arm. “Though… perhaps I see your point.”

They continue in this fashion for several brief moments, Alex forewarning and then applying the medicine, the General fidgeting and making unpleasant noises with every application.

“I apologize for scaring you,” the General finally says, her head downturned in the firelight. “It has been some time since an outsider has been in my home and as you say… I have not been very forthcoming with my reasoning for such orders.”

“You are undeniably… difficult,” Alex concedes, placing the cloth aside and wiping the wound with a dry rag. “Care to tell me how you can lift two wolves up by the throat with your bare hands?” she asks as nonchalantly as possible.

“I had hoped you fainted from fright with no chance to witness that,” the General says, watching Alex’s movements with the most peculiar study.

“Bandages?” Alex says, motioning for the General to extend her arm. “As to the fainting, I’ve seen a man lose a hand from a scythe swung the wrong way. It takes more than a little blood for me to pass out, General.”

The General remains silent as Alex wraps the bandages around her arm, moving when instructed, surprisingly responsive to Alex’s guiding touch.

“You are very brave,” the General says, unprompted, fixing Alex with those slitted eyelids. “Thank you for patching this wound.”

“You’re welcome,” Alex says, moving from her perch on the floor to sit in the chair at the fireside, wincing as she does so. “Oooof…”

“You are injured?” the General asks.

“It’s nothing.”

“No, not nothing. Unattended injuries can lead to infection. I have seen far too many men lose limbs to it.”

“When you put it that way—”

“Did they bite you?”

“No, I just…”Alex turns her attention to her aching right foot. “I stepped on glass earlier when I was… frightened.”

“Glass?” the General inquires, leaning forward over the edge of the cushion. “Come, near the basin,” she directs, indicating the armrest of the couch, and for Alex to apparently sit there. “May I?” she asks, sliding to the ground and motioning to Alex’s booted feet. She looks for confirmation before reaching for Alex’s proffered right calf.

“Uhm… sure?

The General is as methodical in her movements as Alex had hoped to be when nursing the laceration. She undoes the ties from the boots with nimble fingers and removes the boot with one swift movement, quick enough for the pain not to intensify. Now, with her sock-covered toe in the open, the gash only registers as mild discomfort. The General moves primarily with her good arm, working the sock off and examining the underside of Alex’s foot, running an exploratory finger along the arch.

“This is deep,” she says. “But you removed the shard?”

“I think so.”

“You did not check?” she asks, annoyed with Alex’s apparent carelessness.

“I was rather preoccupied with fleeing for my life,” Alex grunts back. “You almost threw a chair at me.”

The General turns her head up at that, the edges of her lips twitching. Alex doesn’t like the way the woman’s skin pinches together even more on her forehead, as if she is genuinely concerned by the accusation.

“I am sorry,” the General whispers, rotating Alex’s ankle carefully with her good arm. “May I clean it? I feel… rather responsible.”

“Yes,” Alex gives in, content to just sit after the harrowing few hours she’s experienced. Again, the General is deft and efficient, dipping Alex’s foot into the basin and giving it a thorough washing. She then takes a clean towel to wipe away dried blood from the two cuts and applies some uncomfortable cream to the ripped flesh. Alex fidgets above her, wincing with every swipe of the General’s thumb against her foot.

“Does it sting?”

“No…”

“Lying does not become you, Alexandra,” the General says, and Alex wonders if this is what the woman sounds like when she is _amused_. “I know it does not feel pleasant, but your reaction is far more controlled than mine.”

“Just get on with it,” Alex grits through clenched teeth, her eyes watering at the creases. She knows that the stinging is good, means that the medicine is working to clean away any infection already settled, but knowing it’s good for her doesn’t make the stinging subside, and it certainly doesn’t make the cut hurt any less.

“There we are,” the General finishes, and Alex looks down to see a wonderfully wrapped set of bandages tied and tucked with expert care around the arch of her foot and looped over her ankle to keep it secure. It’s a far better piece of work than her own clumsy attempts at nursemaid, the drooping layers of bandages already exposing the General’s large flesh wound to the air.

“Thanks,” Alex says begrudgingly.

“You are welcome.

“Thank you, too, I suppose, for—for saving my life.”

The General drops her ankle and moves back to her position on the couch, readjusting her own bandages.

“Those wolves would have taken one bite of your scrawny frame and spat you out.”

“Hey!” Alex says, and for the first time in nearly a month of living at the castle, Alex smiles. It’s small but it’s there, and does not go unnoticed by the General.

“Have… have you eaten?”

“Why?” Alex answers. “Trying to fatten up my scrawny frame to throw to the wolves?”

“That’s one possible option,” the General hums. “Though I know you went snooping during dinner, and fled immediately after. I can ring for something.”

“That… doesn’t sound so bad, actually,” Alex shrugs, hobbling across the floor and then slumping back into the sitting chair beside the fire. Done with playing patient and physician, she suddenly feels the stress and adrenaline of the evening descend over her body like a heavy darkness. She hears the trill of a serving bell, then turns back to the resting woman. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Do you need anything else?”

“A stiff drink might do some good.”

“That I called for as soon as we walked through the door,” Alex confesses. “Birgitte!”

The service cart comes zipping across the carpeted floor and into the firelight.

“Yes, Alex?”

“Still got the whiskey?”

“Certainly, dear.”

“Time for the General’s healing elixir, then.”

Birgitte toddles over to one of the glasses at the end of the service cart and vaults over the lip of the receptacle, emptying her contents and filling over half the glass.

“To your liking, General?” Birgitte asks.

“Don’t tell the Lieutenant,” the General says to the decanter, patting the neck of the object. “But you have always been my favorite.”

“Flatterer,” Birgitte titters. The General gives an order to prepare something for Alex’s supper and then Birgitte rolls out on the cart, leaving the pair of them in the quiet. Alex to her thoughts, the General to her glass.

“That…” she takes a generous sip, “ah, is medicine enough,” the General says.

“You still haven’t told me about your strength,” Alex reminds her.

“Brave, tenacious, slightly bull-headed… and the memory of an elephant,” the General turns to her, her focus straying from the glass. “Just adding to your list of characteristics.”

“I suppose your characteristics include misdirection of conversation,” Alex challenges her. “Your strength? Your speed? That… amazing thing you did, blowing snow out of your mouth? Is there anything else?”

The General turns from her prop against the arm of the sofa and her face pinches together once again, those slits narrowing to nothing. Alex jolts when a beam of fiery heat pulses across the General’s vision and lands in the hearth, scattering some of the logs and reigniting the dying flames.

“There is that,” the General says simply, returning to her reclined position.

“What—you—how—you can’t just lean back and not explain!”

“Can I not?”

“Really, General,” Alex says, pulling the edge of her chair closer toward the woman on the couch. “If you tell me, I’ll… I’ll tell you about the time Kara tore up a half mile of our neighbor’s fence posts!”

The General perks up at that, twisting to face Alex full on. Her bare, burned feet hit the carpet and it takes great effort for Alex not to twitch when looking at the deep, wrinkly scars over her kneecaps.

“Only what Kara would find harmless. That is, what I can know about her,” the General says. “I do not wish to invade her privacy as I did with your letters. Again, I am sorry for overstepping.”

Alex can’t help but let half the smile from earlier return. “Fast-learner.”

“Pardon?”

“Just your list of characteristics,” Alex says. “I can make one for you too, y’know?”

The General smirks or, Alex thinks it’s a smirk, beneath the scar tissue and snaggle tooth and glint of steel from the slits positioned to either side of a crooked nose… yes, that’s a smirk.

It seems the woman is capable of positive feeling.

“My powers are part of my curse, or—enchantment—as many call it.”

“Enchantment seems decidedly less negative.”

“Indeed,” the General returns. “I was once a woman the same as you, though I was General of the Kryptonian Guard, an elite selection of officers and forces charged with protecting the capital of our nation-state, Argo City.”

“Kara’s home.”

“Yes. I had fought on the front lines with my soldiers. Good men, good women all, but the opposition simply had more numbers. We are—were, a small country, landlocked, with limited resources. We had been peaceful for a long time, but powers and governments shifted as they so often do, and suddenly, the capital was under siege. As part of the sovereign family, leader of our forces, it was my duty—”

“Wait, sorry, sovereign family?”

“Did you believe I obtained the property for your balcony view alone?” the General asks.

“What? No, only… you’re… does that mean Kara’s royalty?” Alex asks, reminiscing about all those moments spent in the field, mud caked onto her legs, smears of fertilizer and sweat plastered onto Kara’s bronzey cheeks. “As in, crowns and jewels and titles?”

“Some of those things, and many others. If she ever cares to take up her mantle as princess again.”

“Prin—Kara? Princess of Argo City?”

“Very good, Alex,” the General half-way cocks what’s left of an eyebrow.

“So what are you, then?” Alex asks. “Viscountess? Baroness? Just General?”

“My technical title is Duchess. Though with certain deaths in the royal family, I could be considered a Queen Regent if Kara ever dared speak with me again.”

“Oh, my…”

“That would be if Argo City were still a territory, which it is not. For now I am just a General without and army.” Said General takes a quick sip of the brown liquid, sighing around the rim of her glass. “Hardly that any longer.”

“A queen with a castle,” Alex mumbles. “But just because you’re royalty doesn’t mean you should be able to bake bread with your eyes.”

“I have never baked my own bread,” the General says seriously.

“Lucky you.”

“The powers were somewhat of a last resort,” the General continues, ignoring the dig. “When the City was on its last legs, I summoned our political advisors, who then summoned the priests, who then summoned the clerks, who then summoned the pagans, and on and on until one morning, I was woken from fitful slumber by a knock on my chamber door.”

“Yes?”

“It was an old beggar woman, who asked how far I was willing to go for my troops.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told her I was prepared to storm hell and burn my hands upon its smoldering brimstone gates,” the General says, displaying her bare hand for Alex’s inspection. “As you can see…”

“So what did she do?”

“In return for great power, I would be forced to wear the wound of every soldier I killed or maimed in battle. I had expected the enchantment to fade once the battle was won. I did not think that I would need such power for future skirmishes.”

“So what happened?”

“I was greedy,” the General says. “She offered me the chance to protect my family, the royal line. They would not have the same powers as I did, not to my extent, but they would be frightfully strong, or wickedly fast. They would possess at least one of the traits that I have in order to better protect themselves.”

“So you made the bargain.”

“I did. However, the price for those powers extended to my family was the permanence of the scars. The enchantment would likewise apply to my home, and everyone in it—a convenient piece of information the witch left out of her proposition. The spell on my household will not break and the scars will not fade unless… well, it does not really matter now. I have grown accustomed to them, though I do not spend hours before the looking glass," the General sips at her drink, the shadows playing over her face in the lowlight. Alex watches, and nearly doesn't believe the woman when she continues: "It is far more pleasant to see a face like yours, Alex.”

“That’s…” Alex feels her cheeks grow warm. Likely from the fire, from her drink, from the hot water she’d just immersed her hands in. “That doesn’t explain why Kara lost her family. Why the city fell.”

“One soldier does not an Army make,” the General answers. “Though I fought my hardest, it was clear that there were many more of them than there were of me. I’m sure you can tell just by looking at me that I did a fair bit of damage.”

“But not enough?”

“It is different when you see the pain manifested upon your own skin,” the woman says wistfully, flexing her fingers against the glass. “My sister was killed when she attempted to smuggle Kara out before the castle fell, and I was left to mediate in her stead, a disgraced General, more powerful than thirty men yet nevertheless, arrested by fifty. I never knew what became of Kara, whether she lived, or died, or…”

The General retreats from her thoughts and takes momentary refuge in her drink. Another large gulp, then a return to the story:

“Now I know. I had hoped this could be her home, but she wants nothing of me. I do not blame her for her hesitancy. My damnable pride brought about my own destruction and has fated me to this lonely life. I am surly and grumpy and set in my ways, unpleasant, ugly, and I possess a temper like a wildcat. My only desire is to feel at home once more. To find a family again.”

“Be more like this and less… you know…” Alex makes a face and mimes sweeping her arms over tables, turning over furniture and roaring raucously. “And perhaps Kara will come around.”

“One can only hope,” the General says, tipping the rest of her drink back and placing the glass aside. “It is late, and the kitchens probably have your food ready. I did not mean to keep you.”

“I didn’t mind it,” Alex says, looking over her shoulder at the grate of the fire. “Will you be retiring as well?”

“Yes. I feel as though I could sleep for days. Wait… what are you doing?”

Alex has moved toward the fireplace, kneeling down in the process. “Extinguishing the fire.”

“The servants will attend to it.”

“You mean to tell me you’re a fearsome General with super strength who can’t possibly be burned any more than you already have been… but you can’t tidy up your own fire?”

“It is not as if I _cannot_ do it—”

“You are merely spoiled by your fine living,” Alex amends, watching as the General comes to her and kneels at her side.

“Show me then.”

“I would, but—your arm,” Alex says, laying an open hand at the top of the bandages.

The General freezes under her touch, her attention distracted by Alex’s fingers.

“I am only watching.” The General turns her focus back to the fire with a shake of her head. “No use in dirtying my hands when yours are perpetually stained with soot.”

“Fine then, General Cleanliness,” Alex chuckles, resuming her task. She rakes the coal and heaps the ash atop the glowing embers.

“Astra.”

“What?” Alex turns to see the General staring deeply into the dying fire, watching the embers dance and gleam like stars in daylight.

“My name,” she says. “Astra.”

“Oh,” Alex says, tearing her eyes away from the anomaly at her side. “Astra, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for all the feedback on this one guys. its been terribly fun working on it!


	7. Progression

The following day is one of the best Astra has experienced in close to a decade.

Alex extends an invitation to breakfast via Michèle and finds Astra fiddling with her bandages near the entrance of the dining room, clad in skirts of a burnished tangerine that blend remarkably well with the last falling leaves outside. Not that Astra had spent much of her morning fretting over which dress she would choose.

Because that would be patently ridiculous.

“Good morning,” Alex places a hand over her mouth, unable to suppress the yawn.

“Good morning, Alex,” Astra says, dipping her head in acknowledgement. “Did you sleep well?”

“Excellently. I’ll have to thank Birgitte for the toddy that sent me off,” Alex offers the woman a small grin.

“I can never find complaint with her selections,” Astra says, moving to her spot at the head of the table. She takes her seat and begins filling her plate, sneaking curious looks at Alex as Michèle prompts the conversation at her side.

“I am going to, if you would just let her _sit down_ before—”

“What was that?” Alex asks, her head turned up from the dishes before her.

“Nothing!” Astra says, heaping more food on her plate, more out of nerves than out of hunger. “That is, I was wondering…”

“Yes?”

“About half a mile of fence posts?” Astra continues. “You indicated that Kara had gotten into some trouble at one point.”

“Oh,” Alex nods to herself, her eyes sparkling at the recollection. “Did she ever.”

“My niece did have a talent for getting herself into all sorts of mischief.”

“A talent that has not receded in the years since you saw her,” Alex returns.

“May I hear the story?” Astra asks. “If I do not overstep?”

Alex places the serving spoon down and tucks her napkin into her collar, charming if not a touch crude, though Astra supposes it keeps the dress from splatters in much the same way her trained table manners do. She holds her tongue and takes a sip of strong, black coffee, hanging on every word of Alex’s animated story.

With her semi-enhanced hearing, she picks up on the excited whispers from Michèle and Roberto beyond the door. Waking up to Alex tending her wound had been surprising, given the woman’s general distaste for her existence, but it had not been at all disagreeable. The woman was a villager, unrefined and blunt, which was a refreshing change of pace from the degree of faux propriety Astra had grown so accustomed to during her years at the Argo City castle.

Astra smiles as Alex relays Kara’s antics, wishing she weren’t so self-conscious in her presence. Dabbing at her lip and setting the napkin aside, Astra waits until Alex finishes her story.

“…which ended up with that neighbor—the boy named James, remember?—head-first in the water trough,” Alex chuckles. “Kara will never live it down.”

“I imagine you would never let her,” Astra says.

“What makes you say that?”

“Memory like an elephant,” Astra replies, taken with Alex’s bemused expression. They sit and sip their coffees, watching the branches dip and sway beyond the massive windows, listening to autumn’s dying whistle.

“It will snow soon,” Astra says, like the brilliant conversationalist she is.

“Yes,” Alex answers, pointing her gaze toward the skies. “Not today, though. Wrong clouds.”

“You study the weather?” Astra asks, rather taken aback. “Among your many other interests?”

“Farmer,” Alex shrugs, as if that explained everything there was to know about her. As if Astra hadn’t spent the past month living with the woman, and was only now getting to see a glimpse of who she might be.

“Would you care to accompany me on my morning ride?” Astra chances, pointedly looking out the window as she asks. “I have a route that I take every day when the weather allows it, and it would not put too much pressure on your injury. I usually bypass the lake and… you seem to like it there.”

“Oh, well,” Alex returns, yanking the napkin from her collar and depositing it to the side of her place setting. “I think I would like that very much.”

“Really?”

She can just make out Roberto’s and Michèle’s groans from behind the door, accompanied by the dull _thud_ of Michèle hitting his barrel against the wood in utter mortification on behalf of her awkwardness.

“Yes, really, Madame General,” Alex rises, pushing the chair back behind her with an energetic shove. “I’d like to take Philippe on a ride without something chasing us so that I don’t traumatize the poor animal.”

“Lovely, that is… well… I will meet you in the stables in half an hour?”

Alex nods to her and darts out of the dining room door, and Astra slumps in her chair, praying to magicians and enchantresses and every god she knows for her not to mess this up.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The following fortnight is definitely the best Astra has experienced in close to ten years. She and Alex fall into something of a pattern, spending their mornings together over a meal and then engaging in some activity—horseback riding, a walk through the dead gardens, sitting across from each other in quiet study of their different books. Alex engages with her in a way others never did even before the curse, questioning her and challenging her and offering up perspectives she had never before  considered on certain issues.

Before she knows it, another week has passed and the first snow has fallen. She and Alex are walking about the courtyard speaking of windmillery, the various applications and limits to flour production depending on size, design, and quantity of mills-per-farm acreage. Alex speaks with such eager aptitude that had Astra known the woman in her other life, she would have recruited her as a military engineer.

She allows Alex to walk ahead, the woman clad in a blush dress with white fur trim at the collar—an embellishment Alex allows herself for this first snow fall.

After the evening with the wolves, Alex began wearing more of the garments Astra knew were tucked away in her wardrobes and chests, as opposed to her favored blue homespun dress and white apron. But Astra made sure the blue dress was laundered with the same care as the finer gowns, not wanting to discredit Alex’s minor connection to her farm. The woman still wore it, on occasion, and it was with great consternation that Astra realized she was paying far more attention to Alex’s body than to the clothing she wore to cover it.

Rich brown hair that reminded Astra of the speckled colors in tree bark, a frame suited to work and riding and physical activity of all kinds (Alex had not lost an ounce of muscle since her lessons with Roberto had started up again), small feet, callused hands, a slender neckline that would have been the envy of every woman at Court, and a chin she’d stick out with stern disregard if ever she felt she was being condescended to (a look Astra had received several times over the course of the first month but that she was noticing less and less the more time she spent learning from the woman). And those wet, startling brown eyes that always held a touch of defiance at the creases.

Astra would gladly fight against an Army to put a smile back in those eyes.

“Astra!” Alex calls, summoning her with quick, flurried movements of her hand. “Look!”

“What, the vermin?”

“They’re finches, you brute.”

Astra had never much cared for birds. Their degree of usefulness was quite low; and her only vivid memories consisted of watching large black ones pick flesh from rotting carcasses on the battlefield.

“Finches, then,” Astra remarks.

Before Astra can see how it happened, Alex has one of the birds perched expertly on her finger, cooing to it as if she could speak its language.

“Now I know why your English is so terrible,” Astra says. “You’ve spent all that time learning to speak bird instead.”

“Here, you take it,” Alex says, extending her hand toward Astra.

“No… it is likely infested with disease,” Astra pulls back from the tiny songbird.

“You’re wearing your gloves!”

“Which is really only the first level of protection. It could go for my eyes.”

“With your heat-beaming stare?”

“One can never tell…” Astra continues, eyeing the finch’s puffed yellow chest as if it had shat on the gilded crest of her house.

“You mean to say a hardened warrior like yourself is afraid of this little thing?”

“I am not afraid, Alexandra,” Astra returns, extending her hand with a huff.

“Here, come closer,” Alex places her free arm on Astra’s wrist and pulls her hand nearer the pair of fingers the yellow finch has rested upon.

Through layers of leather and lined fur, Astra can feel Alex’s skin on her own, can feel that ticklish warmth she’s been trying to suppress flare to life deep within her. It has been an ongoing battle over the past week, that curious feeling low in her stomach. Astra has had words with the cook but nothing seems to have changed. There is fire and there is heat and it all comes to a roiling boil if ever Alex brushes past her.

“There, see?”

“What is his purpose?” Astra asks, slowly bringing the bird closer to her face. It twitches from spriggy foot to foot, turning its neck at unnatural angles, casting wild, revolving eyes in her direction.

“Birds help spread seed, sometimes,” Alex says. “Or the little bastards eat it.”

Astra looks up sharply as Alex claps her hands over her mouth, her rosey, wind-chapped cheeks reddening even further. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“As I have indcated on many prior occasions, Alex,” Astra grins, shoving the bird off with a gentle push of her fingers, watching as it flaps, glides, and rights itself on the wind, “you would have done very well in the Army.”

Alex grins and brushes off the remark, absently patting at Philippe’s side.

“You’d have given me some menial task, I’m sure.”

“With a mind like yours? Certainly not.”

“If ever I angered you, I’d be scooping all of the excrement out of the carrier pigeon cages.”

“No one uses carrier pigeons much any more,” Astra says seriously, observing the collection of birds hopping about at the base of a massive evergreen, pecking at pinecones and hovering over fir-green needles.

“They can’t sing like the finches do,” Alex says, squatting down in the snow and dirt like the country-girl that she is. Astra wants to comment on her behavior but Alex blindsides her: “And the finches cannot hold a candle to you.”

“I…” Astra starts, staring down uncertainly at her gloved hands. “I do not know what you mean.”

“Don’t be coy,” Alex says. “I hear you, sometimes. Did you ever sing for the Court?”

“Only a little, and long ago,” Astra answers, practically whispering.

“It’s lovely.”

“Anything would sound lovely compared to that tavern caterwauling you are accustomed to.”

“No… I still think it’s lovely,” Alex says, clapping her hands together to dust off the remaining pine, standing to face Astra again. “This is the first snowfall.”

“Yes?”

“The changed season,” Alex amends, as if Astra can magically follow her ambiguous suggestions.

“And…?”

“Kara will be visiting soon.”

“Really?” Astra moves next to Philippe, distracting herself by running a careful finger down the length of his nose. She hopes she does not sound pathetically desperate. “You have written her?”

“You don’t know?”

“I stopped monitoring your correspondence some time ago,” Astra confesses. “It was not… fair.”

“She has agreed to come Friday next,” Alex says, running her fingers beneath Philippe’s halter, smoothing out the hairs coming in on his winter coat. “She actually got the harvest taken care of all by herself. Worked night and day to do it, but perhaps that bargain you made for your family ended up helping her after all.”

“An entire harvest complete, just with her strength?”

“It drew some attention from the villagers,” Alex mutters. “I have been careful to keep Kara under a close eye, knowing how superstitious those close-minded people can be of the slightest oddity.”

“Yes well, I have an intimate understanding of that feeling.”

Alex fluffs Philippe’s palomino mane and continues, “She’s told people I went to the sea to work for distant family. I’m sure the rumors will fly without me there to quash them.”

“What might the villagers suspect?”

“Anything,” Alex answers. “Everything: I must be with child. I’m taken with a fever. I’ve finally gone mad from all the novels I read.”

Astra chuckles at that, unable to hide her amusement at Alex’s tone.

“Kara and I are Midvale’s most infamous irregularities. Two young women alone, working as we do, men coming to help us at all hours…”

“Do they think yours a house of ill-repute?”

“That would be humorous,” Alex smirks, then turns her gaze toward her boots, thinking. “I turned down a marriage proposal that would have set Kara and I for the rest of our days. I can only imagine what the town thinks of me now.”

“You were not in love?”

“Far from it,” Alex answers. “I’d only just begun considering marriage as a possibility to restore our finances. I was not prepared to chain myself to a munitions-obsessed mercenary with all the charm of a slug.”

“Do tell me how you really feel, Alexandra.”

“If it ever came down to it, I would do it for Kara, though,” Alex says, patting absently at the horse's neck. “We cannot continue forever in a house on its last legs, packed to the straw ceiling with books, paints—”

“You paint?” Astra interjects.

“Kara does. Excellently, in fact.”

“I know some painters,” Astra jumps on the detail. “I would be happy to write to them on her behalf. I have not seen them in many years, but… I was not always like this. I am still in their good favor. Write to her, ask her if that is something she would like.”

“I would, but she’ll have no time in the forthcoming months. She’ll be sorting the stores for winter all hours of the day. She’s found some help from the next village over, but it is no easy task.”

“Oh,” Astra says, kicking at the snow beneath her boot, rather at a loss as to the best course of action. “And none of your suitors would help her, to get in her good graces?”

“ _Suitors_ is a rather strong word,” Alex responds. “According to Kara, Monsieur Lorde—the man I rejected?—he’s been snooping about far too much already. Maxwell already finds Kara odd.”

“I still would like you to tell her of my connection to the painters anyway,” Astra presses. “If you do write to her soon.”

“You tell her yourself,” Alex responds. “When she comes to visit.”

Astra places her hand over Philippe’s hot noze and asks the question she’s most afraid of. “Is she terribly angry with me?”

“I think she’s just sad. Confused. And without me there to explain… I… you…” Alex rubs a distracted hand down Philippe’s neck, waiting for the words to come. “We will know for sure in a few day’s time,” she finally says, taking the lead and clucking with her tongue for Philippe to follow.

Astra does not like the way Alex plods away, shoulders down, as if a great weight is pressing her into the snow.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Astra remains quiet throughout dinner with Kara.

The coach had delivered her through the wood, and upon entry, the girl had bounded into Alex’s arms, smiles and hugs delivered with the same open sincerity she had possessed as a little girl. The two chatter on endlessly about their harvest, the village’s Winter Festival, that awful man Alex had mentioned, Monsieur Lorde, who Astra learned was a hunter and weapons manufacturer often commissioned by the royal forces who periodically made stops in Midvale. He had supervised weapons exchanges once upon a time with a number of units Astra had faced, but luckily, she never got into dealings of any sort with the man. From Alex’s description, she counted herself lucky. Kara, apparently, had not escaped his scrutiny.

But that does not seem to dampen the excitement of the evening.

Alex positively glows when Kara makes mention of every farming problem she remedied herself, then makes suggestions when Kara finds herself stymied. She teases endlessly, about an ongoing flirtation with a farm boy named James. And as the night continues, the two huddle together in corners while Astra sits off to the side, content to gaze at the pair while remaining on the fringe of their discussion.

Rome was not built in a day, and betrayals lasting years would not be amended in an evening.

Astra attempts to bridge their conversations with Alex’s prompting, earning a sympathetic look from Alex and a stern glare from her niece. Astra sighs, excusing herself, allowing the women to have their final hour together unattended.

She knocks on the parlor door later that evening, only to find Alex, an index pressed over her lips in signal, her fingers trailing through Kara’s hair as she sleeps in her lap. Astra nods, holding up the box she had gathered so that Alex would take note, then sets it aside.

“She talked herself out, it seems,” Astra whispers, approaching the relaxed pair.

“She just gets a little excited sometimes,” Alex continues, staring down in utter adoration at Kara’s peaceful face. Astra imagines that if her own was not disfigured by the curse of her failings, her expression would be similar to Alex’s.

“Can she stay in one of the rooms in my wing?” Alex asks.

“Of course,” Astra answers. “Should I…?”

“Yes, let’s move her,” Alex supports her head and Astra bends to lift Kara, no longer the Little One Astra once sang to sleep with lullabies and fairy tunes. But with her strength it is easy to carry her, to hold her close, even if her limbs have grown, her speech altered, the lines of her face changed, even if she bounds into another’s arms with a look of pure adoration on her face.

She is still Kara and, for now, Astra can still put her to bed.

Astra follows Alex to the south wing, keeping quiet, but stopping short when Alex places her hand on the door to a room Astra hasn’t entered in years.

“I know this was Alura’s room,” Alex mumbles, her hand hovering over the latch. “Do you think… would it be appropriate…?”

“It will suffice,” Astra says, following her in, taking care to steer clear of the doors so as not to jostle Kara too much. They lay her in the bed and Astra is overcome by the colors, the memories, even the faintest scent of Alura’s perfume, still set across the room at the vanity. She might have let the west wing fall to ruin in her misery, but the staff kept up the rest of the castle. Thus, the room was as perfect as Alura had ever kept it. Turning back toward the door, she almost expects her sister to walk through and chide her for keeping Kara up past her bedtime.

“Are you alright?”

Astra feels a hand on her forearm and tries to find Alex’s gaze, but the room is too dark.

“No,” Astra says, astonished by the truth.

“That’s understandable, you know?” Alex slips out of the room behind her and they linger at the door in the hallway, the panel cracked, a small sliver of light shining on Kara’s contented face. “I’m sorry she didn’t talk to you.”

“I did not expect her to,” Astra answers, leaning heavily against the doorjamb. “But thank you for trying, though.”

“You’re welcome,” Alex says, and together they watch over Kara for a few more moments before Astra shrugs, reaches for the handle, and gently closes the door to her sister’s room.

“I do not think she will waste her goodbyes on me,” Astra says, stopping Alex before she can turn to her own quarters. “That box in the parlor? It is for Kara. Do not let her forget it.”

“What is it?”

“Painting supplies. Enough to last her the winter, even if she produces a canvas every day.”

“All of that was paint?” Alex asks, hiding a yawn behind her hand.

“And brushes, parchments, a thinning chemical. If she intends to truly pursue such a skill,” Astra answers. “I know her work is important, but so is her happiness.”

“What do you know of happiness?” Alex asks her, the question loaded with implications.

“Only that I would give up whatever I have left of my own to ensure hers,” Astra answers, bowing her head before backing away. “Until tomorrow, Alexandra.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have u ever wanted every manifestation of a character to be so goshdarn happy in every possible avenue of his/her life that you wrote 25k words of fluff and flirtation bc I DID OOOPS


	8. The Surprise

“Again!” Astra hears Roberto holler some days later, and then the familiar clang of sword, a sound she should not find comfort in considering her history. Yet Astra loves that sound, the whooshing and whistling of the rapier through the air, the peal of steels striking against each other. She stands on the other side of the stable door and listens covertly, tracking Alex’s footfalls with her ears as she imagines the woman’s movements back and forth in the hay.

“Brilliant, Alexandra!” Astra hears Roberto call.

“You think so?”

“Roberto is not one for false flattery,” Astra emerges from beyond the door, ill-prepared for the sight that awaits her.

Alexandra, sword in hand, huffing against a haystack with the water skin held at her lips. She’s shining from exertion, flushed and full of energy, circling her lips around the canteen and taking a long, guzzling pull. Water dribbles over the corner of her lips and down her neck and oh, Astra wonders if the woman’s doing it on purpose. Wrapped up in tight trousers, booted feet, and a long-sleeved tunic, her hair tied back in a plait over her shoulder, she looks ever the young recruit for the regiments.

She must quickly find her voice, if Astra does not want Alex questioning her staring.

“He would not compliment you if you did not deserve it,” Astra manages.

“Sometimes I think he takes it easy on me,” Alex teases, glancing over to the sword hovering several feet off the ground.

“Perhaps you merely need to see another trained body handle a blade before you!” Roberto suggests. “Then you will not doubt the progress you’ve made over the past season.”

“Do you think I’m ready for a proper spar?” Alex directs the question to Roberto but turns to Astra, her brow shooting upwards in something of a challenge.

“If you can convince our recalcitrant mistress to take up her blade again, I’m sure the rest of us would love to see!”

A pitchfork twists over on spindly tines, and a footstool who Astra believes was once a stable boy plops itself in the hay, prepared for the show.

“I am not suitably attired,” Astra tells Roberto.

“When has that ever stopped you before?” Roberto asks.

“It’s alright Roberto,” Alex says. “I might be new but I am a fast learner. Besides, you said swords were not the General’s best weapons.”

“You _what_?” Astra rounds on the floating saber. “You know very well I trounced you to embarrassment at the tournament.”

“The night after Armond played at the tavern? A page boy could have trounced me, General.”

“Fetch me my sword,” Astra mutters toward the footstool.

“You mean this one?” Alex asks, holding up a sheathed blade with an intricately crafted golden hand guard, her family crest imprinted into the grip along with aquamarine jewels, opals, sapphires, and emeralds cut and set to exquisite fashion. Alex tosses it to her and Astra snatches it from the air, her hand finding home on the grip as she pulls the blade from its housing, the melodious note of metal breathing after such a long time kept away. It is relief and rapture to her ears.

“Care to take it easy on me, General?” Alex asks, planting her right foot forward, extending the sword over her bent knee. “I am just a poor farm girl.”

“I am sure you will find a way to turn that deficiency into advantage, Alex,” Astra says, rotating her shoulder, her wrist, whipping the blade in the practiced warm-up maneuvers of bygone days. “If I trip over my skirts, I blame you.”

“Blame me all you want General, but don’t send me to the dungeons for crowing over my victory.”

“You have to win, first,” Astra fires back, hiking the front of her skirt up as she crouches in position.

“Challenge accepted, General. En garde!”

Alex lunges with surprising speed but Astra sidesteps her easily, the old footwork and muscle memory returning as if she had never left the training fields. Alex stops herself from flying into a stack of hay, whipping around with a concentrated sneer on her fairy-like features.

“Should I really take it easy on you, then? Or was that big talk at the outset simply that… _talk_.”

“Just trying to see if you can keep up,” Alex returns, crossing one foot over the other as she circles. Astra mirrors her movements, raising her blade into a two-handed hold up near her head. “It has been nearly a decade since you last saw battle.”

“Are you calling me old, Alexandra?”

“Older than me.”

“Perhaps you will learn here that age and experience outweigh youthful bravado.”

“Very well, General,” Alex says, jittering her feet forward and feinting to Astra’s left. “Show me.”

And with that, they dance.

Alex is sheer physicality and agility, lighter than finches on flying feet and dangerous as the jaws of a wolf pack. But Astra is patient, her strikes exact where Alex’s are hurried. Astra whacks the flat of her blade against Alex’s body whenever she lands a blow, smacking Alex against the back or the thigh on more than one occasion. The exchange goes on longer than Astra initially thought it would due to Alex’s stubbornness; so long Astra has to call for a momentary respite to discard her jacket, the tight leather vest beneath that she favors over her shirts catching Alex’s attention in a way Astra has not seen before. Perhaps Alex is cataloging the best areas to place her hits, wondering if the leather will hold up under her thrusts. Astra does not linger over such thoughts, especially with her brow dappled with perspiration, her heart racing, her feet prancing about the dusty stable floor.

Oh, it is exhilarating to be fighting once again.

Alex lands one superficial hit against her shirt, ripping the sleeve on the opposite arm of her nearly-healed injury.

“Oh! Break!” Alex calls, lowering her blade, her chest rising and falling with significant effort. “Are you alright?”

“Of course. It is only a scratch,” Astra says.

“Your tunic…”

“I have a hundred others,” Astra dismisses her. “Come, let us recommence.”

“Are you sure?” Alex reaches out, her finger tracing the small scratch beneath the sleeve, running whisper-soft over Astra’s skin. Alex looks up with dark, wide pupils and audible breaths.

“Y-Yes,” Astra tells her, gently taking Alex’s fingers from her arm and returning them to the handle of the saber. “You are doing quite well, to land that blow. One final exchange and then a break, perhaps?”

Alex merely nods, still breathing heavily, shaking her head, her shoulders, her arms, bouncing in place with the sword in hand and whipping it into position as she takes her stance.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Ready. En garde!”

Astra lunges this time for the strike, going against her usual tactic of waiting for Alex to make the first move. Alex moves her blade in for the deflection and pirouettes away from the strike, slinging the flat of her blade at Astra’s back—only to be redirected by the length of Astra’s sword, dipped expertly into a block over her shoulder. Astra pushes off with her normal strength, gauging Alex’s fatigue. The woman exerts one final burst of energy for a strike, which Astra avoids, easily deflecting before poking the tip of her blade at Alex in jest. But Alex has crouched, winded by the deflected pass, and the point of Astra’s blade splits the delicate skin of the woman’s cheek, opening the flesh infinitesimally, enough for Alex to gasp, Astra to freeze, and for the cut woman to quickly swipe Astra’s blade away from a strike position and then return the end of her own blade to the General’s throat.

They remain in that precarious tableau, Astra leaning back from the tipped end of the sword pointed at her neck, Alex’s arm shaking from the effort of holding the extended blade in such a position.

“Very… very good, Alexandra,” Astra breathes.

Alex runs a finger over her cheek with the hand that isn’t holding the sword in Astra’s face, smearing the small bit of blood there.

“Does this mean I win?” she asks.

“No. This is a terrible position for a kill strike,” Astra returns.

“You’re at my mercy,” Alex says, though her voice holds no harshness to it, the threat landing hollow. But her heavy breathing, her dark, deep pupils and the way her voice trembles… Astra thinks being at the mercy of another has never seemed so appealing before.

“No…” Astra says, kicking the end of her own blade up with her foot to dislodge Alex’s sword from her tremulous hold, running the metal against the line of steel so that their hand guards clash against each other, the blades crossed in an X in the air above them, their bodies close to flush, their faces breaths away—only tempered steel and swirling possibilities separating them.

Astra can taste Alex’s breaths, see the brave, rigidly set defiance she still holds in her eyes, even now, fought to a stale-mate.

“A tie, it would seem,” Astra murmurs.

Alex nods, the pressure on the blade relenting as she moves her sword down. Astra does the same but cannot make herself withdraw, cannot step away when Alex remains close enough to touch.

“Your cheek,” Astra says, lifting her hand slowly, grazing her thumb over the beaded blood that trickles down Alex’s jaw line.

“No worse than your arm,” Alex whispers, turning, so slightly it almost goes unnoticed, into Astra’s hand.

“You did not deserve it,” Astra says. “I should not have retaliated, I am trained, you are—”

“Oh!” Alex says, leaning, if it is at all possible, even closer to Astra’s face. “Astra…”

As powerful as she may be, Astra swears she forgets to breathe in that moment.

“Your face…” Alex marvels, exchanging touch for touch, running her own fingertips over Astra’s right cheek in the identical spot where Astra dealt the blow. “It’s…”

“Scarring,” Astra supplies.

“Can you feel it?”

“No,” she answers, fearful she might weep beneath such a gentle brush against her skin. “But I can feel you.”

“I can’t believe… even such a small thing? It doesn’t even hurt,” Alex says, cupping Astra’s cheek.

Astra cannot recall the last time she felt someone else hold her so carefully, as if she weren’t made of leftovers, collected tissues, skin flaps and bruises and countless abrasions. As if she were just a body, human again, with every ability to be broken.

“The way of the curse, I fear,” Astra breathes, squeezing her eyes shut so she is not forced to look upon such pity. She wants to relish this, to treasure it, to lock it away in memory as she did Kara’s laughter, Alura’s praise, her soldiers’ cheers. The little joys in a life devoid of such things. Alex doesn’t pull away and Astra curses her curse, hating that she will have to be the one to step away from this blissful touch of calloused, caring fingertips that want nothing more than to learn, to know, to explore.

“We should go in,” Astra manages, turning her head from Alex’s hand, stooping to retrieve her saber as Alex stands, rooted to the spot. “Clean ourselves, get that hay out of your hair,” Astra mumbles, latching the belt about her waist and plunging her sword into the patterned scabbard. “I had come out to summon you, to show you something.”

“What?” Alex asks, and Astra doesn’t know if she’s inquiring about their course of action, or of what Astra has to show her. Alex looks rather dazed, possibly from exertion, the heavy breathing, the—Astra gulps—the _touching_. It could be a host of reasons, none of which are justification for high hopes. Astra returns to the way of thinking that has sustained her over much of the past decade—keep your expectations low, and no one can disappoint you.

“Could you meet me at the entrance of the west wing in an hour?” Astra asks her, pushing the stable door open. “I have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?” Alex asks. “Whatever for?”

“You surprise me everyday,” Astra confesses, toeing at the caked dirt and hay remnants beneath her boots. “I felt like it was time I returned the favor.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

“Is this completely necessary?” Alex asks just over an hour later, freshened and changed and being blindly led through the darkened corridors with Astra’s gloved hand covering her eyes.

“I assure you that it heightens the suspense,” Astra remarks. “It is the same reason why we place hoods over criminals that we lead to the gallows.”

“You are not helping,” Alex responds, though she knows Astra is only teasing her. Teasing that has become much too common over the passing weeks since her rescue from the wolves, since their tentative truce, since moments like the one she and Astra just shared in the stable below began with some regularity. Alex is thrilled by a woman she had so hastily judged, taking her for a sword-slashing barbarian instead of one who would bear those marks for the sake of her family. A woman who, no matter how vehemently she might deny it, cries at the mere brush of fingers against her cheek. A woman who braved her sister’s bedroom after a decade of avoidance in order to put a niece who despises her in the most comfortable position for the night.

“I suppose now that we have put some of those bothersome misunderstandings behind us—”

“You mean since you calmed your temper and decided to act reasonably for a change.”

“Yes, yes,” Astra blusters on, tugging Alex to a halt. “Right turn,” she says, and then, “Step up two times.”

Alex climbs awkwardly, feeling the warm heat of Astra’s body behind hers. It is strangely comforting despite the wild journey she finds herself on.

“Now that we have reached some sort of… hospitable level of interaction, I think you should know you are welcome in the west wing.”

Alex feels Astra shift her hold from two hands over her eyes to one. Her ears pick up the crack and squeak of hinges, a door thudding against a wall.

“Roberto, the crank,” Astra calls.

“Ready?” Alex asks.

“Not quite,” Astra says, moving her into position. “Step up, keep your eyes closed,” she whispers against Alex’s ear. Alex feels Astra leave her standing in position, her arms extended just slightly, as if something might jump out at her at any moment.

“May I open them?”

“Very well… now!”

A draft of cold winter air pours down upon her from the sky overhead, which is her first clue to her location. She sees the domed ceiling retracted to make room for the largest, most advanced telescope Alex has ever laid eyes on. Plated in bronze, trained toward the sky in the tallest tower of the west wing, the mechanism rests on a platform powered by a series of cranks and pulleys, enabling the viewer to turn the device at any angle, catch any constellation, observe any meteor shower. She recalls nights spent with her father, lying in the open fields atop bushy hay bales, learning every myth of constellations, finding Polaris, tracking possible routes through the forest as long as she could find a guiding light. Those stars could always lead her home, and it was everything to know that she could gaze up at them, knowing Kara could be looking out upon the same stars, too, all the way back at the farmhouse outside of Midvale.

“I’ve never… I’ve never seen anything so advanced,” Alex says, skimming her hands over the gears, tracing the notches and levers that could focus the lenses toward the heavens.

“Do you like it?” Astra asks, looking up at Alex on the platform, attempting to keep her hands from fidgeting with worry by interlocking those gloved fingers before her.

Alex smiles, another something to file away for the books. _Kara fidgets in the exact same way_.

“It’s wonderful.”

Astra smiles back through her scars. “It is yours, Alexandra.”

“Really? Do you not like to watch the stars?”

“I have no knowledge of them beyond what is necessary for navigation,” Astra says. “There were other skills to learn, but I know there are many stories associated with the zodiac.”

“I would be happy to teach you,” Alex says, moving down from the platform. “Though I will need more time spent in the library to make sure I am working this model properly. The last thing I want is to disable it should I mishandle the controls during operation.”

“I am confident you would be able to fix it,” Astra says. “We would send the servants out for parts.”

“This is… this is amazing, Astra. Thank you.”

Alex opens her arms and pulls Astra into a hug, wrapping her hands tightly over the woman’s back, her fingers clutching against the opulent fabric of Astra’s vermillion gown. She rests her chin over Astra’s shoulder and squeezes, deciding not to take any offense when Astra doesn’t return the full embrace. She pulls away and feels the press of one hand at the small of her back, light as that first snowfall had been several weeks ago. Astra removes her hand as if seared through the material of her glove, pulling away and placing a fair bit of distance between them. The air is charged as it had been in the stables when she’d felt flooded with heat at Astra’s mere proximity, the swordplay, the boasting.

“I have something for you, as well,” Alex says, recalling instantly, so overwhelmed by the events of the afternoon that she had nearly forgotten she’d tucked it away in her pocket.

“What is that?”

“Here,” Alex smiles, handing over an envelope of yellowing paper, _Aunt Astra_ scrawled across the front in Kara’s cramped hand.

“Really?” Astra looks up, clutching the paper tightly between her fingers.

“Don’t hold it so tight, you’ll rip it,” Alex chides her, taking her hand again, wishing desperately her fingers were not constantly covered in gloves.

“What is—do you think she—?”

“With any luck, she’ll exercise some of those country manners you claim we never taught her,” Alex says. “I didn’t open it, but I can make out something like a _thank you_ ,” she points toward the back of the parchment and holds the envelope up to the light, “just there, see?”

“Alexandra,” Astra trembles before her, dipping her head and staring pointedly at the letter in hand.

“It’s okay,” Alex says, wondering if she’ll ever be able to provide the level of comfort that letter does. “Why don’t you go see what she has to say?”

Astra places her hand over her mouth, as if to hold down some embarrassing cry. “Is it cowardly of me to fear a scrap of parchment?”

“That is no plain piece of parchment,” Alex tells her. “Kara wrote to me that she loved the paint set you gave her. She’s painted some things, tried her hand at Argo City’s skyline.”

“Oh, did she?”

“What she remembers of it, any way,” Alex smiles again, an expression she finds harder and harder to feel guilty about. “Though I really have no idea why you’re still here talking to me when you could be reading that. If she took the time to write you, I imagine she would not be all that affronted if you sent a letter back your—”

Alex is swept into the most desperate hold she’s ever felt, clung to, latched tightly, embraced against a shaking body barely holding itself together.

“—self,” she finishes, returning this second hug, this fraught connection, throwing her arms around Astra’s shoulders and squeezing with all of her might. She feels Astra’s fingers dig into her lower back, hears the envelope crumple, prays for this moment to last just a little longer than she knows Astra will let it. Her fingers stray where they shouldn’t, playing at the ends of the woman’s wild curls. When she twists her face into Astra’s neck, into her hair, she catches the slightest whiff of coffee grounds and cedar, an aged, pleasant smell that makes her feel lightheaded in ways she does not understand.

“Alex.”

Those hands, rubbing against her back, then immediately placing the slightest pressure on her abdomen to put some distance between them. Astra turns her head away to collect herself, curling her fingers into the side of Alex’s tunic.

“Astra, I—it’s—”

“Pardon, I did not… I mean… excuse me,” Astra breaks away from her, wiping at her face. She pivots for the door and keeps a tight hold on the letter. “Alexandra, this… thank you for this.”

“Well,” Alex shrugs, hugging her arms across her chest to prevent herself from reaching out. She feels Astra’s absence so keenly now, as if knowing what it was like to hold her close was a gift of the most precious kind, shared briefly, infrequently, and then snatched away until Astra dared let herself feel vulnerable again. “It’s no telescope.”

“And yet somehow I feel closer to the heavens,” Astra’s lip tilts in what Alex has come to recognize as the woman’s smile.

“Astra!” she says, unsure of why she stopped her again, unaware of why her hands feel clammy, why she feels the need to blink, why her throat feels tight as she struggles for words.

“Yes?”

“Just…thank you, thanks again,” Alex gestures toward the telescope, though the inarticulate response hardly seems an adequate expression of her gratitude. She watches from the platform of the observatory as Astra disappears down the hall, blending into the darkness.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG what kinda dork writes that sappy nonsense...
> 
> *Adele plays*
> 
> Hello. It's me XD XD XD
> 
> (also im guessing you dont spar with real blades but ooops they did im not a fencer fighter swordsperson sry 4 inaccuracy blah)


	9. The Dinner

“… knowing now that this was indeed the legendary sword Excalibur, Arthur tried to pull it from the stone.”

“Say that word again,” Alex tells her.

“Which one?”

“Ex-exie something,” Alex attempts.

“Excalibur,” Astra repeats. “It is not a proper English word, merely the name of the blade.”

“Let me see,” Alex moves from the plush green chair to where Astra sits on the couch in the middle of the library.

It is midmorning in the second month of a new year, several weeks since their first sparring exercise, since Astra had stopped acting so churlishly and had instead given Alex the stars, their late nights spent wrapped in cloaks with Alex telling stories of Pegasus and Orion and Sagittarius. They ease into routine, riding together, dining together, dancing around touches as Astra’s eyes grow dimmer and dimmer, the house’s staff growing gloomier as well. Alex supposes it might be the weather, the midwinter grey keeping everyone cooped up, cold, depressed. She can think of no other reason for their distress, and does her best to lift spirits when she can (oftentimes with spirits of the liquid variety).

One scandalous evening last week, she and Astra drank excessively and slid across the ballroom on stockinged feet, bowling into pewter vases and upending stools and ottomans with a carefree disregard for their priceless worth. Alex had never seen Astra so effusive, and had caught her in her arms as they both fell to the ground, wiggling and laughing and letting their hands roam to places they could later blame on the drink.

But Alex can no longer blame her shifting feelings on drink or gifts or curses. Before the harvest, she had begged the universe for adventure and had unexpectedly received it, but not in the way she imagined. Now, she knew more of sword-fighting and war tactics and engineering than she could have ever learned in Midvale, and likewise knew how to put an obstinate General in her place when she was being unreasonable. Alex began imagining her life here, save for one large, glaring detail.

_She could never give up on Kara_.

“What is it?” Alex asks, meeting Astra’s curious gaze. Alex pulls her feet up and tucks her head against Astra’s shoulder, keeping her eyes on the page to distract herself from the hammering in her chest.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting a better look at the letters, if I’m to learn English,” Alex lies. “E-X-C-A-L-I-B-U-R. Excalibur.”

“Very good,” Astra murmurs.

“I have never heard this story before.”

“It is one of my favorites, though quite long.”

Alex snuggles closer to Astra and leeches her warmth, pulling a hand-stitched afghan from the arm of the sofa. “It’s a good thing we’ve got time, then,” Alex says, spreading the blanket over them.

“Time…” Astra says wistfully.

“Is there something wrong?” Alex asks, tilting her head up.

“No, of course not,” Astra replies, squeezing comfortingly against the crook of Alex’s elbow.

“Has Kara written you again?” Alex asks, wanting to know of Astra's progress with her estranged niece.

Kara does not write much of what happened with Astra as an adolescent, but then again, embroiled in years of warfare, with Kara as young as she was… Alex wonders how much of Kara’s anger is justified. The initial ire she felt might have been misplaced and sustained through a child’s grudge. She’d lost her parents, her homeland, her little comforts, all of which could compound a misunderstanding between family members to hateful proportions.

“She has,” Astra answers, running her finger along the book’s thick spine. “The letters are brief, general, but anything Kara would share with me after all this time I cherish.”

“I’m glad.”

Astra's fingers flit over the pages, unable to remain still. Alex observes, transfixed by the flurry of movement.

“And you?" Astra prompts. "I imagine she has completed and sent several detailed lists of her winter activities to you.”

“She finished the Argo City canvas. Said she cried so hard once it was finished she had to drape a gunny sack over it.”

“I wonder if Bartholomew is still in Alura’s room,” Astra says lightly. “He could perhaps supply Kara with some comfort in your absence.”

“Bartholomew? Who is that?”

“More of a _what_ , Alexandra,” Astra corrects. “Bartholomew was Kara’s stuffed rabbit. It helped soothe her when she was distressed. Bartholomew the bunny.”

“You’re joking.”

“Why would I joke of such things?”

“I do hope you know I will never let her live this down.”

“Oh, Alex, you mustn’t embarrass her!” Astra chides, unconsciously throwing an arm overtop the couch in her fervor. Alex notes that the position leaves the woman’s arm stretched across to her opposite side, leaving it in the perfect position should Astra want to drape her arm around Alex's shoulders while they sit.

_Wishful thinking_ , Alex muses.

“Isn’t that my job as the older sister?”

“She will know I revealed such information and will never write me again.”

“Calm down, she would never be that cruel.”

Alex wonders if Astra has her own Bartholomew, some soft thing she can hold when feeling distressed. Alex then wonders if it was ever another person, and is unprepared for the geyser of jealousy bubbling up into her chest. Alex wonders why she wishes Astra’s soft, comforting thing might one day be _her_.

She shifts closer into Astra’s hold and turns her attention back to the book in Astra’s lap.

“I promise not to mention it if you continue with the lessons,” Alex declares, pulling the afghan tighter around them, allowing her hands to drift where they may, thankful they land near the side of Astra’s thigh.

“Yes… uhm,” Astra squirms, repositioning her arm but keeping it about Alex’s shoulders. “Where were we?”

“E-X-C-A-L-I-B-U-R.”

“Right,” Astra says, continuing to read softly, Alex’s head resting on her shoulder.

 

 

* * *

 

  

“…when Guinevere heard that Arthur was slain, she stole away to a convent. And no one could ever make her smile again. The End, ” Astra finishes, shutting the book and resting it on her lap.

“Wait, that’s it?” Alex says, sitting up properly on the couch.

“What do you mean, ‘that is it’?”

“Arthur dies? Isn’t he the hero? The King?”

Astra smiles wryly. “Even Kings and Queens must pass on when their time comes. He had just fought a rather tiring battle.”

“At least he had a decent method of governing,” Alex returns. “It saves the people from the folly of a fickle ruler.”

“How so?” Astra asks, turning to place her elbow on the back of the sofa, propping her head against her hand.

“His round table. The voting? That seems like a good way to go about things.”

“Then who is the one to issue the order?” Astra asks. “What good is it to have a King—or a General, for that matter—if he or she can be outvoted?”

“I think that’s the beauty of the system,” Alex says. “That his advisors can keep him from invading Denmark or the Ottoman Empire if they think it’s the wrong decision. His most trusted knights… they keep him human.”

“I do not believe I have ever considered such an interpretation before,” Astra says, playing with the frayed tassels on the blanket covering them both. “What an astute reader you are, Alexandra.”

“Now I know what Birgitte means when she calls you flatterer,” Alex returns, nudging Astra’s shoulder. “But in all seriousness, it does take some of the pressure off of Arthur in the long run.”

“Again, how so?” Astra asks.

Alex shakes her head, wondering how to voice it. She can’t pinpoint a time when someone has listened to her so closely, questioned her reasoning and provided feedback. She feels rather… _appreciated_ is not the correct term, but it seems to fit.

“The King doesn’t have to bear the weight of every decision. He has others, friends, comrades, who would help shoulder it. Those willing to carry the load with him.”

“So he does not fall victim to a damning sort of pride,” Astra says, taking on that low tone Alex has come to recognize as Astra’s voice of regret. “So he does not feel as if he must do everything himself.”

“No one should have to make such difficult decisions alone.”

“Agreed. It leads to heartbreak of the severest kind.”

Alex reaches out and takes Astra’s hand, the one resting atop the book in her lap. It is an action Alex has only just begun to do with some degree of regularity, and it still catches both her and Astra by surprise.

“I cannot believe Galahad was the one to sit Siege Perilous,” Alex says, paying no heed to her automatic motion, the threading of fingers and the tiny pressures applied between them.

“Especially after everything his father did… I do feel some sympathy for Mordred, though,” Astra says.

“ _Mordred_? The bad guy?”

“He was more the victim of his circumstances than anything,” Astra argues. “Though I am sure a counter argument could be made for him taking responsibility for his actions.”

“If he had acknowledged how his deeds played into Arthur’s death, the final battle, then I could possibly muster up some sympathy. But he never took that responsibility, unlike others,” Alex says, eyes flickering up toward Astra. “Lancelot and Guinevere… oh, they were tragic.”

“I have no sympathy for them,” Astra turns her nose up.

“No, they were there for each other through the worst of it,” Alex counters. “The war, the fall of Camelot, Arthur’s anger. Theirs is a beautiful story.”

“A beautiful story of adultery.”

“It’s relatable!”

“You relate to adultery?” Astra checks her with a grin, rubbing her thumb along the back of Alex’s hand.

“I can relate to a story about falling for the wrong person, knowing you shouldn’t while it’s happening, but then… doing it anyway,” Alex shifts beneath the blanket but doesn’t release Astra’s hand, unable to face her after such an admission. “I think they’re brave in a way I could never be.”

They both lapse into thoughtful silence on the couch, the fire leaping and crackling behind them. Alex holds tighter to Astra’s hand as if she’ll pull away, but Astra remains, that gentle pressure from her thumb running over Alex’s knuckles. She still wears her gloves around Alex, despite the myriad times they’ve spent inches from each other: cheeks almost touching, wrestling with the hand guards of their swords as they spar; nights spent hovering over backs and shoulders near the eye piece of the telescope; one interesting run-in against Astra’a front while retrieving the tack from the stables that had left a blush running so high in her cheeks Kara could have used the color for rubies in her paintings.

Astra’s high collars, long sleeves, floor-length dresses and thick, dark stockings hide every speck of her body. But beneath all that, beneath even the scars and burns, is selflessness and wisdom and fathomless sincerity. Alex had wondered, at first, if those scars were merely an exterior sign of the rotting core, the blemish on the red skin of the apple forewarning of a worm on the inside. But Alex has found quite the opposite to be true; that even if those wounds are representative of past mistakes, attacks, or hurts, Astra bears them all for a greater reason.

It had only taken a second chance at understanding to find the purity beneath the scars.

“Alexandra?” Astra lays her other hand over their joined ones.

Alex looks up, silent, her eyes stinging for some unknown reason.

“I find you far braver than Lancelot and ten times more beautiful than Guinevere,” Astra murmurs.

Alex sucks her lips between her teeth, turns her head down, and feels that ruby blush rise high in her face. “Don’t let Lancelot hear you say that.”

“And what if he did?”

“He’d challenge you for her honor.”

“I would run him through in an instant.”

“And take another scar for me?” Alex asks, daring to turn her head up to Astra.

“Always,” Astra vows, gripping tighter with her hands over the book.

“I… I think…”

“Yes?”

“I had wondered, perhaps, if you would like to have dinner with me?”

“Dinner?” Astra asks.

“I know you take yours much earlier than I do, since I stay up later in the observatory, or in here, or… wherever,” Alex explains. “It wouldn’t be bounding through the ball room in our stockings, but food. Company. Almost… I know you say you hate those tavern songs, but I know you love music. I hear you.”

“I am sorry, I do not mean to disturb—”

“No!” Alex says. “You sound,” _like home_ Alex thinks, “beautiful.”

“If you wish for music, I can arrange it,” Astra says.

“Yes, I think that would be… nice.”

“Indeed.”

“Right. Music. Dinner. Great,” Alex says, chanting each word to make sure she covers it all.

She stands abruptly, pulling her hand away from Astra’s hold. She doesn’t mean to withdraw so hastily, but finds herself _overheated_ despite the dying fire behind them. “I’ll just go… practice some of that English. And I still have to clean the sword from sparring earlier…”

She backs away from Astra on the couch, wondering what insane compulsion she needed to satisfy by asking the woman to dinner. As if they hadn’t eaten together so many times before. Breakfast, midday meals, an occasional dinner, but nothing… nothing grand. Indicating that it wouldn’t be a drunken turn about the main halls was something, the addition of music something else, but she wonders if Astra knows she wants to try to live up to the luxury of the castle.

“I… I might look into those wardrobes in my quarters,” Alex says, pausing at the entrance of the library. She knocks one fist aimlessly against the doorway, seeing Astra stand, wondering at her own nervousness.

“You have not worn any of the gowns I had once reserved for Court,” Astra suggests.

“Were they yours?”

“Some, not all,” Astra says, taking measured steps in Alex’s direction. “It has been some time since I wore Court dress of my own.”

“And there they sit, just gathering dust.”

“That does not have to be the case.”

“Right,” Alex says, her breath catching when Astra stops in front of her. “Not for tonight, anyway.”

“Tonight,” Astra says. She reaches out and takes Alex’s hand, brings it up to chin level, then places the softest of kisses to her knuckles, her scarred lips running gently over the skin. Alex is not even wearing her bodice with this tunic but oh, she wishes for cooler air, wishes for some relief or understanding, the answer to why she can hardly breathe with Astra holding her hand so reverently. “Alexandra,” Astra dips her head, handing over the copy of _King Arthur_ before she takes her leave. “For your English practice.”

“Practice,” Alex repeats dumbly.

Once Astra has turned the corner to the corridor, Alex reaches out behind her with her free arm, taking hold of the door frame and shutting her eyes to regain some hint of reason. The back of her hand _tingles_. She knows it with a certainty now, that something powerful, mysterious, and magical, is changing within her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I will die of a panic attack before I ever make it to the dining table,” Astra snaps, pacing in her chambers. She begins working at the buttons of her vest and wrenches it off as heated pots of water magically fill the copper bath behind her. She slinks behind the changing shade to remove the rest of her garments despite her men having seen her in varying states of undress during battle.

“She asked you!” Michèle says from the other side of the screen.

Astra wrestles with her chemise and tosses it overtop the screen, then stares down at the ridges of her abdomen. So many scars. Translucent, uneven, wrinkly. Possibly worse than the wounds on her arms, for she inflicted more killing blows to the stomach region in battle than she ever did with glancing hits against flailing limbs. Placing her palm over her bare stomach Astra allows herself one moment, only one, the self-pity a near constant as she marches headlong toward the permanence of this condition.

The rose has only three petals left.

Ten years have nearly run their course.

_In ten years time if you have not found new home, new family, and new love, you will remain in this state forever—powerful beyond measure, but scarred beyond healing. Once the last petal on the rose falls, your time will be up. Do you understand the sacrifice, General?_

Once springtime comes and other flowers begin to bloom, the only flower Astra has ever paid attention to will lose its last petal, all hope of a return to normality lost forevermore. Even though she has damned her pride and allowed someone else to take charge—she’s found home, found love, only a brief walk away from her room in the east wing.

If only Alex felt the same.

One tear falls over what remains of her cheek and she catches it, wiping quickly, before clearing her throat and striding out of from behind the screen, settling with little difficulty into the steaming bath water.

“This night will not mean for her what it means to me,” Astra mutters, taking a breath and submerging herself. She gasps when she resurfaces, shaking her head as a selection of outfits parades before her, the hanger that was once her ladies maid offering wonderful gown options, but nothing that seems right for an evening of such significance.

“You don’t know that for certain,” Roberto chimes in. “She’s asked you for dinner and dancing, and could barely look at you this afternoon when you read to her.”

“Do you not hear yourself?” Astra asks, scrubbing at her hair, swiping soap into bodily crevices and over bony extremities, wondering—not for the first time—why she even bothers. “She couldn’t even _look_ at me.”

“Not for the reason you suspect, my General,” Michèle says, lever cocked into an armed position. “From what Roberto observes when you leave her in the stables, what Birgitte has reported, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that she might reciprocate your feelings.”

“I know you currently lack eyes, Michèle, but the enchantment allows you some magical vision. Have you seen her? Have you looked at me?”

“I see only two very strong women who have a hard time determining what’s best for themselves,” Michèle answers. “And I see a former fighter who is terrified out of her wits because she has never engaged in battle in such a theater as this.”

“I know my own heart,” Astra argues, pouring a pot full of water over her head, hissing when the heat hits her full-force. “But she is not here because she loves me, no matter how strongly I may wish it.”

“For all our sakes,” Roberto chimes in. “It cannot hurt to ask, my General.”

“I do not wish to spoil her evening with such a declaration. She and I both know how inelegant I can be in conversation.”

“Feel her out,” Roberto says, and Astra tosses the saber a scathing look. “Not… literally. You will be able to tell by the way she responds to you whether she requites you.”

“I could never dare hope for such things,” Astra responds, retreating under the water, only to be hauled back up to reality by the pointed tip of a sword at her throat. “Was that really necessary?”

“You only need a boost of confidence,” Michèle says, “and we have just the thing.”

Astra grunts and places her bare arms on the edge of the basin, gazing up at the last possible outfit she had considered.

“Gentlemen,” Astra begins, “Do you think…?”

“Definitely,” Michèle says. “With the saber as well.”

“I do not know… I have not appeared in uniform since this blasted curse began.”

“Then perhaps it is time to end it, dressed like the soldier you are,” Roberto says.

“Men…” Astra calls them nearer. “I am sorry to have gotten you into this mess. If I had only known your fates were tied to mine—”

“We would have stood behind you, no matter what,” Michèle says. “Despite my gun powder allergy,” the pistol remarks, shuddering in a pantomime of a sneeze.

“It was wise of you to pick a career in munitions, then,” Astra says, taking one final breath and sinking under water, emerging just as in love as she was before.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Birgitte said she was coming?” Astra asks, pacing in her boots at the top of the stairs.

The _ping_ of the medallions on her royal blue Army coat rings like cathedral bells in her ears while she waits, working herself into a frenzy. It had taken some convincing, but she does feel braver in her old military uniform: the golden waistcoat matches the trim of the jacket just as it matches the hilt of her sword, much as it had done a decade ago. It took some time to polish the medals back to their shimmering impressiveness, and for her to remember how to fasten the cream-colored ascot with her regiment’s pin. But with Michèle and Roberto guiding her, she was soon dressed and ready to buckle the saber at the waist band of cream-colored, form-fitting breeches. She then made her way across the red carpet of the staircase and down to the main hall.

“She is coming, do not doubt it,” Roberto says. “Are you ready?”

“Why does it feel as though I am heading into battle?”

“Because you are overly dramatic,” Michèle responds soberly.

Astra halts in her pacing, placing her hand in its customary position upon the hilt of her sword. “You are certainly one to talk.”

“Astra,” Roberto mumbles. “Look.”

Astra turns round and there, surrounded by the soft glow of the castle’s candlelight, is Alexandra. She stands atop the opposite secondary staircase that leads to her eastern wing, her hands gripped tightly in front of her, forearms covered by satiny golden gloves that run up to her elbows. The gown is exquisite, voluminous, not at all Alex’s standard fare, but ballooning out from her slim waist and suiting her as perfectly as her blue homespun nonetheless. It shines golden as Astra’s medals, as fire flames, as the sun, golden like the rooftops of Argo City at the height of her sister’s reign. Alex offers an eye roll and grips hard against the staircase, descending in tandem with Astra.

“You are not allowed to laugh at me if I fall down in this,” she says lightly.

“I would never.”

“Lying doesn’t become you, General,” Alex tells her, repeating what she was told on the evening Astra rescued her from the wolves. The evening everything started to change. “Unlike your… suit.” They face each other at the top of the main staircase, Astra in her military garb, Alex in her gown, and a host of household items peeking out from behind corners to observe the exchange.

“Yes, well, you did mention possibly making an affair of the evening.”

“I did,” Alex smiles. “And I am glad I did.”

Astra clears her throat and looks to the foot of the stairs. “Shall we?” she asks, offering Alex her arm.

“Though if you had planned on sparring before dinner, I wish you would have let on to me,” Alex tells her with a pointed look to her hip, her fingers wrapping around the blue fabric encasing Astra’s bicep. “How I’d buckle a scabbard around my waist in these skirts, I have no notion.”

“There are ways to conceal your weaponry beneath gowns in Court dress,” Astra offers.

“Are you speaking from experience?”

“Most certainly,” Astra smiles as best she can, opening the door to the dining room with a flourish. “I am honored that you asked me here tonight. You look gorgeous, Alexandra.”

Alex twists her head to the side and fidgets with the gloves near her elbows.

“Not bad for a mere village farm girl,” she deflects, a common habit Alex falls into whenever the woman does not know how to take her compliments. Astra recognizes it immediately and wonders what she can do to relieve Alex of such a habit; then again, to be able to notice such a repeated deflection means that Astra knows Alex on a level she never believed she would. It is an privilege, truly, to know her so well.

“No,” Astra wants to make her every action, her every word as clear as the glass encasing her rose. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. In breeches or ball gowns, you astound me.”

“Astra, I… you…”

“Come,” Astra prompts her before Alex is forced to say something untruthful. She does not expect compliments returned for the sake of politeness. “I believe Birgitte promised champagne tonight.”

“Did she?”

“I might have made a slight suggestion,” Astra continues, walking Alex to her seat.

“Your uniform is… did all the soldiers of Argo City have such finery?” Alex asks, smoothing her skirts over the cushion.

“Only the Kryptonian Guard, those who protected the royal family and its ministers.”

“You were in charge of protecting your own family.”

“I was,” Astra answers, approaching her position at the head of the table.

“You seemed to be excellent at it.”

“No, not if I—”

“Then what are your medals for?” Alex asks quickly, turning her attention to the champagne flute bubbling at her place setting.

Astra mumbles when she answers: “Meritorious acts of service and bravery beyond the call of duty.”

“You’re using the frankly ridiculous distance of the table to downplay certain acts of chivalry.”

“No, I am not,” Astra speaks up.

“Yes, you are.”

“You know nothing of the honorary degrees of Argo City.”

“But I know you,” Alex says, sipping at her champagne.

Astra looks up at her through the candlelight, reaching for her own flute. She toasts Alex, takes a sip, and wonders if the bubbles will give her the bravery she feels lacking this night. “Do you truly?”

Alex smiles. “I think so. And yet… I would like to know more of what I do not already,” Alex removes her napkin from the table and drapes it over her lap this time. Astra wonders if Birgitte gave her any suggestions about the evening but honestly, even if Alex had tied the ends of the dinner napkin about her neck like a kerchief, Astra would love her all the same.

“Your position as General of the Army, Head of the Guard?” Alex continues. “It was so you could protect your sister, was it not?”

Astra looks to the first course set before her, her stomach too tied up to eat.

“Yes,” she answers.

“Would you tell me about her? About Alura?”

“I… have not spoken of Alura in quite some time.”

“Only if you wish to share that part of yourself,” Alex tells her. “You said, when I first came here, that some places are sacred. The same can be said of people. Kara comes to mind, for me. It is why I held onto so many of her stories until I felt you… until I felt I could trust you.”

Astra picks up her spoon and swirls the tip in the soup.

“What would you like to know?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Alex says, setting her champagne aside and turning to the soup. “I need to know if you two got up to half the trouble Kara and I did.”

Astra laughs, a bark, a boom, powerful and unexpected and unknotting the chunks of shrapnel that have settled in her stomach. How could she have ever thought Alex didn’t know her? She is as easy to read as the novels in her library.

“Well, Alura was first born,” Astra begins, “which makes her the queen of the region, but I was not content to let my sister have all the fun…”

Dinner proceeds and Astra doesn’t stop talking throughout.

Alex doesn’t stop smiling.

 

 

* * *

 

  

Alex is howling over the story where she and Alura switched places at Court. She had once instructed Alura’s counselors to send missives to the most distinguished traveling sideshows in honor of Kara’s birthday, and had made the finance minister who kept rejecting her proposals for more military funding go on a personal scouting mission to find the audience-participating bear wrestlers.

“You didn’t make him wrestle the bear, did you?” Alex asks.

“Alura interceded before I let it get that far,” Astra says, turning when she hears the string music floating in from down the hall. Two glasses of champagne down and she feels as if she’s one of Alex’s stars, weightless as burning fire fixed to the night sky, staring down at all the tiny people of the earth and wondering if she’ll ever feel this high again.

“Shall we go investigate the music you probably had a hand in arranging?” Alex asks, pressing back from her chair with that same energetic shove and bounding toward Astra, pulling her up from her seat and leading her out into the hallway.

When they walk into the ballroom, they see that the chandeliers are lit. The piano lilts automatically in the corner, and a hat stand accompanies the tune on the violin.

“Far better than tavern music,” Alex says, taking Astra’s hand, moving into her body. “Will you show me how you dance at Court, General?”

“Dancing?” Astra asks her.

“Surely you were required to do it, growing up in a castle,” Alex says, leading her out to the center of the floor.

“I never lead,” Astra confesses, wondering if her hand might melt as Alex guides it to her trim waist.

“I would offer, but I don’t believe the gown would let me,” Alex says, as they fall into an uneasy step, Astra attempting to recall the rhythm the masters at Argo City once tapped out with their instruction sticks.

“And surely you were required to dance,” Astra says, once she finds her feet, falling into the give and take, the lunge and retreat as easily as if they were sparring. Perhaps that had been practice of another sort, the whirl of blade foreshadowing this whirl of skirts, pressed against each other with nary an inch of space between. “In your country taverns, at your seasonal fairs.”

“Most eligible maids do.”

“But you didn’t?”

“I personally thought of myself as ineligible.”

“On what grounds?”

“Because I knew I could never find someone there I wanted to be with. Why waste my time?”

“One could never accuse you of impracticality.”

“Except on evenings when the fancy strikes and I choose a dress I can hardly walk in, let alone dance in.”

“Shall we slow down?” Astra asks, snapping a finger toward the instruments, the tempo slowing to a bewitching, melancholy tune.

“Yes,” Alex says, moving her hand from its position on Astra’s shoulder, walking her glove-covered fingers up to the back of Astra’s neck.

Astra’s heart nearly leaps from her chest when Alex rests her head against her shoulder, swaying where Astra leads her, holding tight to Astra’s other proffered hand. As happens some mornings when she forgets herself, when she still feels the residual happiness of Alex with her, close to her, no longer drawing away, Astra begins a simple song. No words, just humming the tune along with the strings and piano chords. She could not conjure words if she tried, for there is no way to describe the feeling of Alex pressed against her, Alex’s hand at her neck, Alex trusting her to turn them around the floor, keeping them upright. They continue to dance until Astra is dizzy with satisfaction, and even then, the night does not end.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Are you cold?” Astra asks, noting the tiny hairs standing at attention along the skin of Alex’s arms.

They have moved to the balcony, the better to see the stars on the clear winter night. Alex’s dress, though perfectly acceptable for a ballroom of overheated dancers and drinkers, does not afford any protection from the elements, the loose drape of material over bare shoulders exquisite yet unsuitable in the open air and moonlight. What Astra would give to press her lips to those shoulders, to run her finger along the line of Alex’s collarbone. It has been ages since she’s engaged in such intimacy, never desiring someone so fully as she desires to be with Alexandra.

“Are you about to take back your word?” Alex asks, nodding as Astra removes her coat and moves behind her.

“What word was that?”

“That I am not impractical,” Alex answers, slipping the blue coat over her shoulders, taking a seat on the stone bench and guiding Astra down beside her. Those hands, constantly touching hers, never drawing away, holding on as if Alex _wants_ to be held, to be touched by a scarred General and no other.

“I shall amend it then, that you are only impractical infrequently,” Astra grins. “On special occasion, nights when impracticality affords an air of satisfaction you could not otherwise achieve with logical thinking. In this case Alexandra, it suits you to such a degree that I would encourage such wayward thinking far more often.”

Alex looks up at her then, her cheeks slightly flushed, her eyebrows raised in delight, her smile, oh, the wry twist of those lips, directed solely at Astra. “Did everyone simply fawn over you at Court?” Alex asks, tracing her gloved hand over Astra’s, fiddling with the golden cufflinks at the wrist of her uniform. “Your wit is almost as sharp as your sword. I don’t know how anyone could resist.”

Astra looks down and takes those gloved hands in her own.

“I believe people feared me, even then.”

“You mean… before the curse?”

“Yes. You forget I was an unholy terror mere months ago. And had a legion at my command.”

“They dare not make you angry, then,” Alex guesses, staring unabashedly at her medals. “Though… such fire could attract admirers,” she says, husky and low, looking up through lengthy lashes that curl effortlessly.

“What would I know of admirers?” Astra asks her, moving one of her hands from its place holding Alex’s in her lap, reaching out to touch the silky brown curl of her hair. The strands slide over her fingers like a satin waterfall, but she does not chide herself for the daring that one moment took. On this night of all others, Astra wants to be perfectly transparent.

“A woman like you does not want for anything,” Alex offers, holding her gaze steady, lifting her own hand up to trap Astra’s hand against her cheek. “Lovers included.”

“When such things were possible, I could have had them. Yet I never found anyone I—anyone who would’ve interested me beyond a mere dalliance. I am certain I had nothing on the many suitors who would ask for your hand.”

“And yet our reasons align once more,” Alex says, rotating her neck and dragging Astra’s hand down the corded muscle there. “What would I want with village boys or scullery women who held none of my interest? Who could not make me happy?”

“You are the most remarkable woman,” Astra continues, wishing for a miracle, for the smidgen of a possibility that Alex would allow her to pull that neck closer to her own, to press against those lips with the jagged remnants of her mouth. But the way Alex leans into her, giving, touching, damn near _reciprocating_ —it gives Astra the courage she needs to ask her next question.

“And are you happy here with me, Alexandra?” she asks, waiting for the answer with baited breath.

“Yes,” Alex returns, and the relief Astra feels is immense. "More than I could have ever imagined I would be."

Alex looks over the wall behind them at the starry night, back in the direction of the forest, in the direction of Midvale… back to Kara. “If only I could see Kara again,” she whispers, clutching desperately at Astra’s hands. “The dinner last month could have been better, and the letters… I haven’t had one from her in nearly a week. They’re not the same as having her here. You are nothing like I thought, amazing even, but I—I just miss her so much.”

“I understand,” Astra says, knowing the acute pain of losing not just any family member, but a _sister_.

“If only there were a way I could see she was alright,” Alex says. “As I said, the letters… sometimes I fear she doesn’t tell me the truth, so that I won’t worry.”

“As you did with her?” Astra asks, chagrined. “In the beginning, I mean?”

“Yes,” Alex admits. “We love each so much we would undergo great hardship to see the other well. Satisfied. Happy.”

“There is a way for you to check on her,” Astra says, rising, this time pulling Alex with her. “Come with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this might well be the sappiest dopiest thing ive ever written and i love every word of it and I love that YOU GUYS LOVE THIS TOO ugh my heart for them it sings disney love songs


	10. The Release

“This mirror will show you whatever you wish to see. You need only speak her name,” Astra says, passing the enchanted mirror to Alex.

Astra had once thought the glass greater portion to her punishment. She’s lost count of the number of times she attempted to shatter it. But having it whole, here, for Alex’s use, means that perhaps she was never supposed to break it, for Alex had always been meant to use it. Fate or destiny, Astra does not hope, but Alex’s brightening face at the possibility of seeing Kara again can only lift Astra’s spirits higher.

“I want to see my sister, Kara,” Alex says, hesitating over the words.

The mirror shines to life, a green shimmer fluttering around the rim of the glass.

“Kara!”

Astra crosses to where Alex stares at the mirror, thunderstruck, her hand pressed over her chin. They watch as Kara throws an untrained punch against a man charging her, what Astra supposes is the interior of their farm cottage wrecked to shambles.

“Where is she?!?!” they hear a low masculine voice vibrate through the mirror.

“Get out of here, go!” Kara cries, pushing against another man, sending him flying, crushed into her table.

“They’re drunk, oh god, they’re raving,” Alex mumbles beside her.

Kara flails and makes a dent in the wall without so much as a whimper on her part, drawing the eye of every man in the room. And then, Astra hears a voice smooth as oil call for a halt to the hostilities, cackling malevolently.

“Hold up there, gentlemen,” a dark man with stubble and black hair comes into view before Kara, running a thumb over the cracked plaster behind her. “I’ve only ever seen bears and canon fire make that kind of dent in a wall before.”

Kara spits in his face and Astra feels a strange sense of pride swell within her. “Maybe if your men didn’t treat me like one—”

The man backhands Kara across the face. “What did you do to your sister?”

“ _Nothing_. I told you—”

“She’s been missing for nearly five months. Turned me down because of _you_ , you strange, unnatural girl. If a little rough-housing won’t loosen your tongue, perhaps some time in the village jail will.”

The men surround her. But even with her strength, Astra knows Kara will not fight. She was never trained, never allowed into the fencing yard, no matter how many times she begged her mother to let her ride with Astra for troop inspection. Even with her recent behavior toward Astra, she relented after that first dinner and wrote her, initiated a dialogue. Kara has never been one to hold grudges.

Alex slams the mirror down on the table and turns, eyes wild with panic. Her terror-stricken expression does not complement her gown, shatters the mood, wrenches at Astra’s heart as forcefully as a musket ball tearing through her flesh.

“Astra… she—she’s in there because of me. This happened… this is my fault.”

“No, Alex—”

“They came for me, I didn’t leave her with any sort of plan, no real story,” Alex paces frantically, wringing her hands in despair. Astra turns from her, gazing at the rose, the second-to-last petal falling gently to the table below. “He already suspects Kara of some grave offense of which she is not guilty.”

“Who?”

“Monsieur Lorde,” Alex says. “The man… he asked me to marry him. Apparently he thinks Kara is—I don’t know—holding me back. He’s taking out my refusal on her, she’s hurt because of _me_.”

“Listen to me,” Astra turns, grasping Alex by the shoulders and holding her still. “This is not your fault. This is the reaction of a pathetic, small man who cannot take you at your word.” Astra looks toward the ceiling of her chambers, blinks back the moisture collecting in her eyes, and makes her decision:

“You must go to her.”

“W-what?” Alex stammers.

“To Kara, and quickly, before any further damage can be done.”

“But…” Alex begins, “What of the trespassing charges?”

“Alex, you are no longer prisoner here. You have not been for a long time,” Astra says, sliding her hands down Alex’s arms, letting go and standing back. “I release you.”

“Astra.” Alex is filled with energy, ready to act, to ride, to challenge. Astra knows time is of the essence, so she turns toward the table and picks up the mirror. “Take it, in case you need to observe their positions in the village. And your sword, should you run into any trouble. With the progress you have made, those village simpletons will not stand a chance against you.”

“Astra,” Alex mumbles again, overcome.

“Go,” Astra urges, unable to bear her name on Alex’s lips, not when she’s pushing her last chance for redemption out the door. “I would go myself, but my reputation does me no favors in the provinces. My scars—they would know me in an instant. To Kara, Alex. Michèle!” Astra barks.

“Mistress?” the revolver _thunks_ from around the corner of her doors.

“Have the stable hands saddle Philippe. Alex rides tonight.”

“Alex… rides?”

“At once, Michèle!”

Astra turns back to Alex, who no longer simmers with untapped energy, instead regarding her with the awe Astra had always hoped to instill in others. She holds the mirror loosely in hand but moves into Astra, grabbing her by the arm and preventing her from pulling away.

“Thank you for knowing what she means to me,” Alex murmurs, tilting upward, leaving the briefest kiss on Astra’s cheek in the spot where their mutual scars had healed. Alex’s scar had faded. Astra’s had not.

“Safe journey, Alexandra,” Astra replies, relishing the warmth while it remains. All at once Alex is across the room, returning the meaningful gaze as she lingers by the door. “Farewell, brave one,” Astra says.

“Goodbye, my General.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Alex soars through the night.

It feels like flight, like finches weaving up and over branches and zigzagging through tree trunks, an instinctive, homing sense guiding them through daring feats of gliding acrobatics. Philippe must sense her urgency, for he merely thrusts his head forward and pins his ears flat, mane billowing as his footfalls leave craters in his wake. It takes far too long, hours through the night, guided by the same full moon that had taken her to the haunted castle all those months ago. The wind is sharper, the air colder, and her heart, changed utterly. Once she gets Kara back, has her alone, rights the cottage, formulates a plan, she can take the time to _explain_ to her, plead Astra’s case, tell her sister how she fell so deeply—

They hurdle the felled oak, which means she’s only two miles from the village. She does not lead Philippe homeward, instead plowing past the turn off and taking the road to the main street instead. Pounding along, praying for Kara’s safety, sick from her unresolved evening with Astra, she can only hope the morning will look brighter. 

Alex zooms past the tavern, nearly running down some drunken fool in her haste. A shout, but she cannot waste time looking back. She slows to a canter, pulling at Philippe’s head with enough force to hurt the poor animal, but she is close to manic from worry. She slides off the saddle and breaks into a run, the scabbard hitting her thigh with every stride. Rounding the corner toward the main square, she spots the bailiff’s quarters and shoulders open the door, knowing there are only two cells in operation for the occasional drunks gone too far at village festivals. One is empty, mice chewing at a raggedy cloth in the corner, and in the other, lies Kara.

“Kara!” Alex runs past the snoozing man on duty and yanks the skeleton key from its position on the hook across from Kara’s cell. She takes great pains to place the key in the lock, twist, and swing the cell door wide open. “Kara,” Alex calls again, falling to her knees next to her sister. Alex's blue dress is an utter mess, torn and dirty, the thread picked from the ride through the woods. She can’t find it in her to care, not with Kara below her looking quite worse for wear. Her sister would never believe that so few hours had passed and that Alex, unaware of Kara’s turmoil, had been dressed in finery beyond their wildest imaginations. But Alex cannot think about that now. Kara rolls over, slightly bruised and dirty, but otherwise unharmed. “Oh, Kara, what did they do to you?”

“Nothing that will last,” Kara manages, smacking her tongue against her teeth and then running it against the split in the corner of her lip. “Had a little blood, though. My mouth tastes like iron.”

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” Alex grumbles.

“What, in the cells? Am I beginning to develop a reputation?”

“We’re getting you out of here,” Alex says, throwing Kara’s arm over her shoulder.

“Now why would someone break _into_ a cell?” The bailiff who had been asleep on the sofa in the front room is now standing at the entrance of the building, blocking their exit. He’s fat, nearing sixty, and his eyes are red-rimmed from sleep, face flushed with drink.

“To get someone wrongfully imprisoned _out_ ,” Alex snaps.

“Monsieur Lorde said he caught this woman trespassing—”

“Where are her papers? The bill of arrest? Where was her village representative and has she had her chance to confront the accusations?”

“Now, m’lady,” the bailiff hiccups and Alex can hardly believe she’s still standing here, having a conversation with a walking container of port. Then again, one of her better friends over the past few months had been a wine decanter, so she has certainly experienced stranger things. “This all happened this evening, the parchments won’t be drawn up until the— _hiccup_ —morning,” he ends his explanation with a violent belch.

“God,” Alex swears, noting the new pistol lying on the desk at front. It gleams, a fine piece of craftsmanship, but Alex recognizes the model. “Surely Monsieur Lorde would not have bribed a man of the law to bend the rules in his favor?”

“I don’t know what you’re on about—”

“The flintlock pistol, Monsieur Bailiff,” Alex continues. “It’s of Lorde’s stock. And I know he has great deals with the regiments coming through, deals that he secures over a glass of stout port. You reek of it.”

“You have some nerve coming in—”

“I should report you to the provincial magistrate—”

“That’s it!” the bailiff shouts, lunging for the gun.

Alex pops her sword from its sheath and brandishes it in the bailiff’s face. “No, you won’t be needing that,” she says, motioning for the man to back away from the table. “Let us pass, and be grateful I don’t run you through, you drunken buffoon.”

The man skitters back and Alex and Kara make it past him, turning onto the cold sidewalk and hustling back to where Alex left Philippe.

“Alex, you have a sword.”

“I do.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Astra,” Alex answers, removing her cloak to throw it over Kara’s shoulders.

“She gave you a weapon? Really?”

“Really,” Alex stops outside a nearby home, the light from the window glowing onto the cobblestone street. She pulls her sister near enough to get a proper look at Kara’s face. “Oh… Kara.” Alex wipes at the caked blood on her chin and pushes the hair from her face, unable to contain her joy at Kara’s safety. She pulls her close, wrapping her sister up in a tight hug. “You know, we were so wrong about her,” she says, releasing her sister. “Astra is not at all like she seemed that first night.”

“She’s been sending me letters,” Kara says. “She… she wants to know me.”

“She would give anything to have you back in her life, to explain why she had to make the choices she did.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I know her so well Kara, I… I think I might…”

“Alex?”

“ALEX!!!!”

Kara and Alex turn at the call, watching as Maxwell Lorde and a dozen soldiers from the regiment come walking up, Philippe’s reins pulled tightly by a scruffy man in a redcoat who stumbles into a buddy at his side.

“Isn’t this quaint,” Max says, taking stock of Kara and Alex beside the stone cottage. “Come to rescue a sister who, I suspect, does not need rescuing at all.”

“You’re insane, Maxwell,” Alex spats. “You conjure up some mad story because you can’t take a rejection.”

“No, Alex, I’m a logical man,” Max says, coming to a halt at the front of the semi-circled soldiers. “And there is no reason, logically, for you to refuse me. Who wouldn’t want to be with me? I have money, looks, power—”

“Sane people,” Kara grumbles under her breath. “Sane people wouldn’t want to be with you.”

“No logical reason for you not to want to share your life with me… unless you had something to hide.”

“We have nothing to hide besides our disdain for you,” Alex shouts, “And it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so when you lock Kara away on trumped up trespassing charges!”

“It’s my word against hers.”

“I saw you attack her! If I go back to the cottage, will I find it wrecked? I bet your shop is completely untouched.”

“You can’t prove anything,” Max says. “I, on the other hand, have significant evidence that suggests Kara has taken liberties with your good nature, imprisoned you, kept you hidden while she took over the farm herself. Some bastard outlander with her eye on all of your land—”

“Unlike you, Max? She’s more family to me than you’ll ever be.”

Max does not look deterred in the slightest. “Your ordeal has traumatized you, Alex. She’s kept you away for so long that you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Stop making things up!”

“It’s only natural that you think Kara’s your sister, living as you do,” Max says, his tone placating, condescending, drawing the snickers from the collection of soldiers behind him. “But if you can’t explain your absence, then we can only assume the worst.”

“I’ve been with Kara’s aunt!” Alex shouts. “I’ll have her write you, verify, if that’s what you’re looking for. She’s been… looking after me, telling me about developments for the farms…”

“All this time?” Max asks incredulously, stalking ever closer. “Who is she? Where? You can’t just make up some fictitious relation and have us believe—”

“It’s not a fiction, she’s real!” Alex cries. “She was an Army General!”

The soldiers behind Max begin laughing outrageously, no doubt fueled by drink and Maxwell’s conspiracy theories.

“A general, really?” Max questions. “I’m familiar with most officers in the regiments, so forgive me if your story seems a little far-fetched, Alex,” Max says with a sneer, leaning into her face. He grabs her by the arm and pulls her close enough that she can smell his breath: not an ounce of alcohol. He’s riled up those men and he’s completely sober, drunk instead on his power, his rage. “Stop this nonsense and give over your sister. She is… not natural, Alex. I saw her progress at the harvest, I know for certain... But marry me and I won’t tell a soul.”

“You can’t blackmail me into a marriage, Max,” Alex snaps right back. “And besides, I can prove Kara's aunt is real.” Alex wrenches away from his hold and wants to go for her sword. She resists, opting for every avenue of diplomacy first. She finds the enchanted mirror and holds it carefully, hoping that visual proof of the woman in her military regalia will curtail the mob-mentality Maxwell has been sure to provoke this night.

“Show me the General,” Alex says to the mirror. “Show me Astra.”

The mirror flares to life once more, a shower of green and ethereal enchantment pulsing from the mirror’s edges in rippling waves, floating around her wrist, pulling her, inexorably, to the image of the woman she left hours ago.

Had Astra been swaying with her, holding her in her arms in the ballroom, caressing her face… had that been just _hours_ ago?

“This is General Astra of the Kryptonian Guard,” Alex shouts, showing the mirror frame to the soldiers. Astra’s face, solemn and scarred, stares out of the glass in her hand. None of the soldiers are snickering now. “General of the Army in Argo City, at her castle in the wood.”

“The Demon Fighter,” Alex hears from the crowd.

“The Scarred Scourge,” another voice.

“She withstood the siege, took out an entire troop single-handedly!”

“High General Astra In-Ze,” Maxwell growls, his voice dripping with contempt. “You’ve been all this time with that butcher? That proud, vainglorious—she is not a woman any longer. Look at her, Alexandra.”

“I see her far more clearly than you ever could, Max.”

“I’ve seen thousands of soldiers and none are so vile or egotistical as that woman.”

“How can you speak to her ego? You know nothing of her,” Alex argues.

“I know she resisted help when she needed it. When my arms could have secured her victory, she refused to buy. Made a deal with a devil instead, walked onto a battlefield without so much as a private by her side. Challenged the regiment’s commander to single combat, thinking that would prevent the inevitable.”

“You mean she offered herself up instead of buying your products… instead of prolonging a war that could have only ended in further bloodshed?” Alex pieces everything together, why Astra would dare make a deal with an enchantress to protect her family when their numbers were so outmatched, why she capitulated—to prevent further loss of life—why it all fell to ruin…

Why Argo City fell.

_She did it to save her soldiers._

“It is not as if the opposing forces would have agreed to such insanity,” Maxwell scowls. “Singular combat is for knights who are dead and rotting in the earth.”

_King Arthur is one of my favorites, though quite long_.

“She may have taken on an army, but no enchantment can defeat two hundred rifles and canon fire," Max says. "I lost a major deal because of that woman.”

“You would have supplied both armies until there was no one left to fight on either side,” Alex bites. “You give them weapons that do away with the honor of combat, machines that kill and kill without discrimination, without reason. As long as you sell your firearms, you’d be content to watch both sides wipe each other out. She has more heart than you ever will!”

“Why are you defending her with such—oh,” Maxwell says, his furrowed, heavy brow smoothing in understanding. “Oh… if I didn’t know better, I’d think you had feelings for this monster.”

“She’s not the monster, Maxwell,” Alex says, hate shining in her eyes. “ _You_ are.”

“Is that so?” Maxwell retreats, regarding Alex with untempered disgust. “Fine, then, Alexandra. It is no wonder this oddity came from that family,” Maxwell gestures carelessly toward Kara. “But I won’t stand for her taking you from me.”

“I was never yours to begin with!” Alex shouts, drawing her sword and assuming her stance. “I can’t let you hurt her.”

“Really, Alex? As if you’ve done any good here tonight," Max says, turning over his shoulder to address the gathering crowd. “Would you really try to fight me? I _make_ swords for a living.”

“That does not mean you can wield one,” she continues. “Or are you too cowardly to accept my challenge?”

Max scoffs. “You’re like her,” he says. “Again, why would I do anything so foolish when I have numbers on my side? Gentlemen!” Max turns to the congregation of regimental soldiers, all gathered round him as if he was their commander, not their supplier. “How many of you have brothers, or fathers who fell in the siege at Argo City? How many men lost their lives in the Border Wars?”

A whooping refrain passes over the crowd, violent shouts calling for blood.

“How many fell to that monster?!”

More shouting, the clang of amassed weaponry, the rumbling of hooves underfoot.

“I thought as much,” Max scowls at Alex, relieving one of the soldiers of a flaming torch. “The General is famous for her finesse in fighting. Let’s take the battle to her!”

The men all shout and raise their swords, fire musket balls into the night sky as their shadows stretch to gargantuan heights, flooding the cobblestones with dark shapes and hateful intentions. In the chaos, Alex watches men move to restrain her.

“Back to the cells with them!” Maxwell shouts, mounting a stallion black as coal, his puffing exhalations steaming white like dragon’s breath in the winter night. “Can’t have them warning our embattled General!”

Alex strikes with her sword when the first soldier lays a hand on her. She can only put herself between Kara and the charging men, swiping with broad strokes, thrusting when any of them move in close enough for her to hit. But it isn’t as if she is facing a single opponent in a matched fight; it is unbalanced, unfair, no honor to this type of aggression. They converge on her eventually, knocking the sword from her grasp, taking Kara along with her.

“No, Max!” Alex shouts, but the din of the military company’s horses is already echoing through the village streets. “Stop, don’t do this!” She shouts and kicks and struggles, but she cannot seem to break free from the hold of the three men wrestling her back to the bailiff’s quarters. She catches a glimpse of Kara doing the same, twisting against the half dozen men attempting to contain her.

“Enough!” the bailiff shouts, pointing his newly polished Maxwell Lorde pistol right at Alex’s head. “Or this one loses more than just her pretty face.”

Alex spits at the man and keeps struggling, caring not for her own fate but for Kara, for Astra, terrified of what those soldiers might do to the castle. She sees one man lift the butt of his gun and strike, then all fades to black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> max is such a derfwad


	11. The Attack

Astra had watched as Alex pushed Philippe down the bridge and through the gates, her cloak whipping after her in the winter wind. She tracked Alex from the balcony until she lost her to the forest, that gaping mouth of wilderness swallowing Alexandra whole. Astra had unbuckled the ornamental saber at her waist and shucked her blue coat, removed the embroidered tunic, her boots, her uniform breeches and hung them all with great care back in the wardrobe. She walked through her chambers, catching glimpses of her scarred, angry skin reflecting in the shards of broken mirrors swept to the side, removed from the main floor ever since she granted Alex access to the west wing. She had stood before the glass and touched her bicep, where Alex had applied that stinging medicine; had wrung her hands together, thinking of all the little moments Alex had willingly drawn them to her; skimmed her fingers over her cheek where Alex’s injury had marked her, where Alex’s lips had kissed her.

Her fingers eventually ran toward her chest, one large, slashing bit of translucent tissue appearing in the space between her breasts, directly over her heart. The largest, deepest scar of them all, and Alex would never know she left it.

Now Astra sits on a chaise lounge with stuffing bursting from under the upholstery, clad in leggings and a long-sleeve tunic for her lonely night ahead. She wonders, though, as the rain begins to pelt against the windows, if she’ll ever sleep soundly again. Hours pass and she stares out the window, lost in memories of Alex, caught up in her worry for Kara. Perhaps now that Kara has responded more than once to her missives, she and Alex will write her, if only to assure her that they are well. After tonight, there will be no chance of traveling for her—not that she has left the castle in ten years. But she had hoped to, one day, once the curse was finally broken. But there is no longer a chance at _one day._

The last petal will fall, and she will remain scarred evermore, a fright to all who cross her path. Shortly, she will be surrounded by beauty: the flowers will bloom in the gardens and the lake will draw animals out of their hibernating states. Spring will come and with it, the picturesque sway of lavender blossoms on the branches, the smell of upturned, dampened earth, new life taking root and beginning afresh. She looks to the rain again; it is not cold enough any longer to freeze to sleet. Just wetness, washing so many things clean.

But not her.

She will remain burned forever.

“Mistress!” Birgitte calls from around the doors to her chambers. “Mistress! Have you looked to the front gates?”

“No,” Astra answers, not bothering to turn round.

“The castle is under attack! Michèle and Roberto have gathered the forces, they await your orders to—”

“Stand down.”

“What?” Birgitte calls.

“Stand. Down.” Astra repeats, tucking her knees up underneath her. “And find some place out of the way to hide. I do no know of the consequences that might affect your health in your current states.”

“But they’ll come for you, General.”

“Let them come.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Alex wakes to Kara poking her repeatedly in the gut.

“Wha—What happened?”

“They threw us back in the cell,” Kara explains, helping to raise Alex into a sitting position. “Made some crass comments and took off after Max.”

“Astra,” Alex says, scrambling to her feet. “Kara, we have to warn her.”

“Might be too late for that,” Kara says, rising to her feet and walking toward the bars of the cell door. “But we can fight for her.”

Kara reaches out with her hands and takes hold of two of the steel bars then squeezes, pulling against the hinges and the lock and lifting the entire door from the frame holding it in place. She tosses the thing across the hall of the bailiff’s quarters as if it weighs no more than the hand basket where she houses her paints.

“Since Max knows, there’s no point in hiding my strength. Secret’s out more or less, so…” Kara nods toward the corner where Alex’s sword rests, right beside the pistol the bailiff had used to threaten her. “Let’s go save my aunt.”

Alex pulls Kara out of the cell, straps the sword to her own waist and tosses the pistol at her sister.

“Best little sister ever.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Astra remains quiet and still when she hears the soldiers call for their supplies. They scatter about and yell for their carts, finding axes and saws and sundry equipment likely not requisitioned for such purposes. She wonders what type of commander would lead men like these, men whose movements look clumsy and uncontrolled, even from her distant vantage above in her chamber. They fell a tree and Astra nods, thinking she would have done the same, but with far more finesse. They strip the limbs  to create the infiltration weapon: a battering ram. She watches them heave it atop muscular, militaristic shoulders, and feels the tiniest of vibrations as they bash through the gate and take to the steps of the castle where the front doors remain locked. Locked ever since Alex left.

She hopes the staff have taken her at her word; she has lived and survived a siege that resulted in far too many lives lost. Astra would not have the same happen again, especially to the few brave souls she thinks of as friends. If she can prevent further destruction by going quietly with these soldiers, she will do so.

It doesn’t take long for the soldiers to break through. She hears them moving through the main hall, thankful for the quiet. Stillness, for only a few more moments, and then—chaos.

The sound of startled shouting, guns firing, swords clashing, ringing discordantly—not steel against steel, but perhaps against pewter? Silver? As if platters or candlesticks or pokers from the hearth have taken up the fight against the infiltrating forces. She rises, crossing toward the rose one final time. She quickly brainstorms the best course of action, resolving to go down and surrender, to put a stop to the foolishness, to end whatever hostilities have been brought about—likely due to some fault of her own. Her actions do not matter much now. The last petal will fall at any moment. The household will fall, she will be taken, but perhaps the staff can live out the rest of their cursed days without being placed under some microscope for examination. It is the last good thing she can do.

“Some General you are.”

Astra turns slowly over her shoulder and sees a dark man, one not arrayed in any uniform, holding a flintlock pistol at his side. She does not respond.

“Or demon, more likely. What did you sacrifice for an armed household? Your family?” he slips through the doors and raises the gun, aiming directly at her back. “Your backbone?” she hears him pull the hammer back into position, the _click_ of the lever locked in place. “And what of your humanity, General? You certainly don’t look the part.”

“I have no quarrel with you,” Astra mumbles. “I will ask you once and no more. Take your soldiers and leave my home. There is nothing here that belongs to you.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong.” Pistols are notorious for their inaccuracy, but she’s let him get closer without intervention. Within range to kill her. Perhaps if she dies, the spell will be lifted from her house. Muskets shoot _lead_ balls, so it will be no question of piercing the skin, simply whether the man has decent aim...

“Alex,” he says, his hand shaking as he extends his arm in her direction. “… is mine.”

He fires and the bullet strikes true, the small, sphere-shaped ball of metal lodging in the muscles of her right shoulder, scraping against the scapula. She cries out, gripping her arm, but does not have time to focus on the pain. The violent man charges her, and before she can assume a defensive stance, bowls into her and knocks her through the window of her chambers. The glass and framework shatters around them as they land on the flattened rooftop of the west wing. He swings wide with a meaty fist, landing a blow against her stomach. The rain pelts against her face and lightning ripples across the sky. She staggers back, the pain in her shoulder searing, all fight drained from her.

“What is it, General?” he asks again, pressing his booted foot against her shoulder and kicking, sending her rolling over the rooftop. “You think I wouldn’t fight you because you led an Army? Because you’re a royal? A woman?” He reaches down and grasps her by the collar of her tunic, ripping it in the process of hauling her to her feet. “I know your kind,” he spats in her face. “And you are not _human_.”

He tosses her even further across the stone, the momentum taking her all the way to the edge of the roof. A bolt of lighting strikes the top of one of the forest trees, splintering its topmost branches, shooting silver smoke skyward into the storm. The smell of ozone sizzles at her nostrils as Astra hangs over the edge of the rooftop, thinking at least she will die with some poetic justice, her prideful fall a fitting end to her story.

Rain hits her and she relaxes, prepared to accept the worst.

“What is it General?”

She can feel the man tromping towards her.

“Too kind and gentle to fight back?”

Astra closes her eyes, waits for the killing blow.

“Astra!!!!”

Through the rain, she can hardly see the blob of movement come barreling over the castle bridge. Too large for a single rider, perhaps two, but that voice, that voice through the storm—

“No, Astra!”

_Alex._

 

* * *

 

 

 

Alex pushes Philippe as hard as she dares with both her and Kara on his back, hoping against hope that she isn’t too late. Philippe stalls under Alex’s hand as she stares up at the rooftops of the castle, the slopes and spires on the western side overlooking the cliffs and the river below.

“Astra!” she yells, catching fearful glimpses of the woman hanging over the edge of the eaves, Max approaching her from behind. There’s something in his hand, something large, grotesque, the face of some dreadful beast carved into stone.

“No, Astra!” she calls again, making sure the woman can hear her.

Astra’s head moves. And even if Alex cannot hear her through the rain, she knows Astra needs her.

“Kara, we’ve got to get to her.”

“I’ll help you get through the main hall and hold the soldiers off.”

“Come on!”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Astra turns and catches the gargoyle with one hand before the man can bash her head in. She grunts from the effort, clutching the carved rock with all of her might, bits of stone crumbling beneath her fingers from the pressure. She rises, keeping her sights set on the surprised man, pushing up against his leverage with magical muscles until he stumbles backward, only half of the stone club still in tact. He swings at her and she dodges the swipe, mirroring his footwork by crossing one sure foot over the other, moving nimbly despite the throbbing pain in her shoulder.

“Did you really think you could keep her here?” he swings wildly again and she blocks it easily, blending into the shadows playing over the roof. The swirling clouds overhead lighten and darken the facades of the demonic statues, which provide the necessary camouflage as she retreats from her enraged attacker, the one who must have proposed to Alex—Monsieur Maxwell Lorde. She darts in and out of the sculptures, keeping her eyes and ears open for Lorde’s approach. She stands stock-still when she sees his shadow pass her, shuffles into position behind him, only to leap backwards as he swings the club toward her torso.

“Did you think she would _love_ you, General? When she could’ve had me?”

Lightning and thunder and rage fuel her next move: she launches herself against him and they roll down the sloped roof to the next level, falling and sliding then scrabbling for purchase against the slate, desperate to hold onto the roof and not pitch over the edge and into the river below.

“Astra!”

Astra looks to the upper level and sees Alex hovering over the ledge of the balcony, her cloak whipping in the wind behind her.

Thunder crashes and Astra ducks, nearly crushed under the weight of the stone club Max smashed against the roof—right next to her skull.

“It’s over, General!” he rants. “Time to die!”

Astra growls and tackles him again, rears back and knocks him across the jaw, then in the abdomen, yanks the club from his arms and delivers her own blow directly to his leg. Max’s body relaxes completely, taking blow after blow like some pitiful ragdoll. Astra can feel her power surging back to life, her strength, her speed, all of it to get back to Alex. She grasps Max by the throat and squeezes, lifting his feet from the ground and suspending him out over the edge of the roof.

“No, please!” he sputters. “Don’t hurt me! I’ll do anything, anything!” he flaps pathetically in her hold, struggling and begging. It would be so easy to drop him, so easy to end this miscreant’s life, as she has ended so many others…

The rain spatters against her nose, and the thunder rumbles at a distance.

_No._

She cannot do this again. Killing is no easy matter. As a General, she has learned that lesson better than most. Even with such a worthless man held at her mercy, she doesn’t want to prove the man right by doing precisely what he’s accused her of.

Astra yanks Max back onto the rooftop and tosses him to the ground. She stoops low, practically growling in his face: “Take your soldiers and get out.”

She delivers one swift kick to the gut for good measure, then begins the climb back to the balcony. With her strength and speed, it does not take as long as perhaps it should. But with Alex as her target, her lighthouse, her beacon, she is more incentivized than ever.

“Astra!” she calls again, extending her hand over the railing of the balcony.

“Alex,” Astra says, grabbing for her hand, pulling herself up with what’s left of her remaining strength. “Oh, Alex.”

Alex holds her tighter, tight as she can, her hands migrating from Astra’s grip to cup the woman’s drenched face. Are these tears that Alex is wiping away? Raindrops? Some symbolic baptism? She can hardly breathe for relief. Alex. Alex _here_. Alex in her arms once again.

“You… came back,” she mumbles, running her hands up Alex’s drenched sleeves, moving to brush her wet hair from her face. Alex nods, leaning into her touch, never more beautiful, never more brave. Even in the rain, with a bullet in her shoulder, Astra feels at peace. “Alex, I love—”

That peace is shattered by a fire in her side, a pain so sharp it blinds her momentarily. She can feel herself slipping, feel her grip on the railing loosening, flailing backward, swatting at the air behind her to rid herself of that terrible, pointed pain.

A shout, a tug, and a momentary blackness before it becomes difficult to breathe, but Alex is pulling her by her shirt over the stone railing and back to the balcony; then, a scream of such horror fills her ears she wonders if she’s finally dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why does everything always end up with astra being STABBED okay like can we maybe give her an apple cider and a big sweater and someone to cuddle and a rubix cube or a book or whatever her little general heart desires because she DESERVES it my murderous bby
> 
> also, ive been bombarded with autumn things as of late, sorry the author's note went in a weird direction
> 
> BIGGER ALSO-- y'all are getting an epilogue :D


	12. The Transformation

“No, no, no, no-no-no,” Alex chants, ripping her cloak from her shoulders and covering Astra’s body with it. She guides the injured woman down to the floor of the balcony, sliding as she hovers over her, cradling her head in her lap. She feels Astra struggle to breathe below her, sees blood, black and thick, pouring out of Astra’s lower back and staining her white tunic, only to be washed away from the stone by the rain.

Astra opens her slitted eyes and heaves, her breaths labored, guttering, and Alex knows what’s happening. It happened to one of the young boys on the other side of Midvale early one summer years before Kara came to live with them. A cart race between adolescents, a spooked horse, and overturned load. The boy was crushed beneath the cart, his chest compressed, drowned above water as blood filled his lungs.

“You…” Astra sputters, coughing up the tiniest bit of blood. “You came back.”

“Of course I came back,” Alex tells her, wiping quickly at her mouth. “I got to Kara and then they… I couldn’t let them…” she can hardly keep herself together. Astra looks pale as her tunic, her pinched, puckered flesh ashen as the landscape during snowmelt. Alex thinks of Kara, fighting soldiers below with the flying objects of the house; Max, pitched over the balcony and wailing into the darkness; Astra, withering in her arms, exhausted from a decade past, dying from a stab wound.

“This is all my fault,” Alex whispers.

“No… No, Alex, maybe… it is— it’s better this way.” The words come out in a strained rush over Astra’s lips, as if all the breath she’s taking pains her, every word expelled with a rapidly depleting energy. Astra attempts to smile at Alex but her eyes roll into the back of her skull. Alex can see the irises now, the remnants of green, like springtime just around the corner. How did she only notice them just now?

“Don’t talk like that,” Alex chides her. “We’re together now, everything’s going to be fine, and—look! There’s Kara.”

“Kara?”

Alex feels Astra’s head turn against her knee to catch sight of Kara perched uncomfortably at the door of the balcony, a floating saber and pistol at her side.

“At least… I got to see you both…” Astra takes a pained, rattling breath. “… one last time.”

Alex feels Astra cup her face, run her index finger down over her cheek, over the place where the scar from the sword fight should have been. Alex clings to that hand, feels its crinkled, pitted flesh but finds home there, finds trust, never, ever desires to run away from that hand or this woman again.

“You must know…” Alex begins, her composure wilting like Astra’s enchanted rose. “… it took time but we’re here, we’re home, Astra, you’re my home, don’t—”

But then the muscles go slack. The fingers relax. Astra’s arm falls away from Alex’s cheek and her head flops sideways against the stone.

“No,” Alex whispers, throwing herself over Astra’s torso, clinging to her body. “No please… don’t leave me,” she cries, her voice growing ever softer, as if she might disturb Astra in her precious, eternal sleep. Her words are gentle but she sobs so violently Alex feels it crack her very heart open.

“I love you.”

She remains there, hunched over a lifeless body until her own chest hurts, until she can no longer breathe for sobbing, clinging to the cloak covering Astra and wishing they only had more _time_.

Time enough to tell her, to kiss her, to keep that damned rose from dying, and Astra along with it.

Then something shifts.

A movement.

A flutter from underneath her.

Her cloak—the cloak covering Astra—swirls about in the air, on the wind, but it feels nothing like natural wind. It shimmers, pulls the body away, like the green light that had curled around Alex’s wrist when she summoned the magic of the mirror. Alex picks her head up and twists about, tiny stars falling, pebbles, hail stones, glimmers of spectrumed space rock surrounding her and the lifeless form in a supernatural shower of light. Alex feels the shift again and looks down to feel the weight lifting off of her, Astra’s body _suspended_ in the air, floating, flying! Just like the objects moving about in the house. It defies all logic, and yet the light wraps Astra within its beams and swaddles her in the material of Alex’s cloak.

Alex crawls back from the sight only to have Kara fall to her knees behind her and take her by the shoulders. They huddle together, astounded, nearly blinded, but Alex cannot pull her gaze away from the strange magic.

“Alex, what’s happening?”

“I don’t know.”

The cloak completely obscures Astra’s form—a body curled in on itself, wet with dark blood, with rain, with stains from the rooftops, but suddenly—everything _shines_.

A hand emerges from the cloak, light pouring from the fingertips. A foot, pale as moonlight, skin smooth as the woven silk of the tapestries inside, emerges from the cloth and glimmers brighter than the sun’s reflection on the lake. Then Astra’s face, her head, her hair, her neck, all stretch from beneath the cloak and begin to change, the tangles blown about as her face flashes with a blinding luminescence, until her head slumps forward over her neck so that the face is obscured from view. The tiny glowing meteors have stopped falling. The body wrapped in the cloak lies limp, one hand hanging limp over the edge of the material. Something magical lowers that form to the ground of the balcony and Alex gasps, amazed, when the form beneath the cloak begins to move.

Alex can make out the angle of an elbow beneath the slashed sleeve of her tunic, the careful curve of a calf beneath the wet leggings. The hair, once a nest of unkempt knots now bounces with tight, mahogany brown curls, offset by a streak at the temple still the color of lilies from the gardens. The form regards the fresh hands, the silky neck. That new body grips the sleeves of her shoulders then turns and locks eyes with Alex, jaw gone slack in disbelief.

“Alex?”

Alex attempts to rise to her feet, Kara helping pull her up when her own muscles fail her. She approaches as the rain lightens and the clouds recede, a host of emotions like confusion, devastation, elation, and hope bombarding her with such intensity she doesn’t know how to feel. This woman has about two inches on her and possesses a smooth, sharp cheekbone, unblemished skin, and round, glittering eyes that sparkle like the emeralds and aquamarines in the hilt of a combat sword.

“Alex,” the woman takes a tentative step forward, placing her hand on her own chest, one on her stomach, as if to make sure for herself that the body is real. “Do you not recognize me?”

Alex reaches out, her hand hesitating in midair, for surely, _surely_ , this can’t be the miracle she prayed for. Astra, _her_ Astra, died in her arms. Astra was scarred and burned and disfigured from a battle that ended nearly a decade ago. But Alex finds herself running her fingers through those curls and placing her hand on this woman’s cheek, finding one single scar, faded almost as to be invisible, perhaps where the tip of a sword had brushed her cheek and broken her skin.

“Oh, Alex,” the woman sinks into that touch, shuts her eyes, and places a single hand to Alex’s waist. She sways, perfectly content, a solid, melodic hum resounding from the woman’s chest. An entirely whole, smooth chest lacking abrasions, filled to life with a beating, resilient heart.

Alex hears that otherworldly hum and she knows for certain.

“It is you,” she answers, her chin quavering with joy. “Astra…”

Astra places both hands against Alex’s shaking jaw and holds her steady, tilts her head up, and presses their lips together in a kiss that holds every hope the two had ever shared. There are whoops and whistles but Alex is unconcerned with the revelry, intent to press into the woman holding her close and take those lips once more between her own. This sensation feels like glossy magic, like sparks are erupting within her mouth and dancing over the tongue that sweeps in to taste her. She feels the wind rush about her as Astra kisses her, as Astra holds her close, as Alex responds in kind. Alex breaks away to see Astra looking down at her with utter adoration, enough that she might drown in it.

“Alex!” Kara calls, and that sobers her enough that she pulls back, her hands still wrapped round Astra’s torso.

Kara’s attention has turned toward the various devices at her side, all shimmering with that same rainbow glow from the falling pebbles. And then, with a lot more speed that was afforded Astra in her change, the devices morph completely. Instead of a glass bottle resting atop a rolling tray there sits a woman, clad in a purple dress with straight red hair the color of cherries, her hand clutching a wine glass of red liquid that had once filled her glass form. And then a lean man, muscled with a trimmed black beard and olive skin, swooping in to take the woman from the cart.

“Birgitte!”

“Roberto, watch the wine!” she chastens him, taking a huge gulp.

A stern looking man with salt-and-pepper hair stands at attention in the corner, nodding at the pair and talking in quiet tones to Kara.

“Michèle.”

Astra releases Alex with a squeeze to her waist, crossing to clasp arms with the lean man standing beside her niece. “How marvelous to see you, old friend.”

“And you, General,” the man claps Astra across the shoulder, beaming at her. “I had thought you might have given up on us.”

“Not with her to force me into living,” Astra tosses back, glancing behind her at Alex. “And most certainly not without amending some things that need my attention. Little One?” Astra asks, turning to Kara. “I know ours will not be an easy relationship to rebuild. But it would honor me greatly if you would allow me to… to explain.”

“You love Alex,” Kara says, her gaze shifting between the two women. “You’re in love with her.”

“Greatly,” Astra relents. “Though you should know… I have never stopped loving you, Kara. I am so proud of the woman you have become and—and Alura… she would be so proud of you, too.”

Kara flings herself into her aunt’s arms and hugs her close, tightening her grip and mumbling apologies into her neck.

“I can’t believe it,” Roberto says, placing his arm about Birgitte’s shoulders as she swats at him, focused on swirling her wine glass.

“It’s a miracle!” Michèle answers.

“Alex.”

“Astra,” Alex answers, moving toward where she and Kara stand, slipping into Astra’s hold. “We have so much to talk about.”

“Indeed,” Astra answers, “but I think we have time.”

“Time,” Alex repeats, grinning at her sister, then turning to take in Astra’s beautifully imperfect face.

“I know it’s only sunrise,” Roberto says, glancing toward the dawning glow in the east. “But could anyone else use a drink?”

Several hands pop up and Birgitte jumps to action.

“Allow me, General!” she says, pushing her cart back inside, followed by a host of people looking forward to a clearer morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they all lived happily ever... oh wait, there's an epilogue! Somewhat *less* Disney appropriate than the rest of the story ;) *wink wink nudge nudge* Also, do y'all know how gay this story is? It starts raining like pinky rainbow pebbles during the transformation scene i mean come OOOOOONNNN
> 
> also, don't think about the beginning of this chapter being Alex's reaction during canon events because GUESS WHAT IT HURTS


	13. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorta indicated in previous author's note there's one scene in here that wouldn't make it past Disney censors so skip to latter half of epilogue if you want to remain pure of heart like Disney fairies

The next several days pass in as much of a whirlwind as the past few months have for Alex. She had been so overjoyed by the breaking of Astra's and the staff’s curses she had not witnessed the change in the castle itself: tapestries decorated with bloody battle morphed to elegant scenes of knights on parade, waving kerchiefs for ladies fair and sitting astride steeds ornamented in finery to rival that of the noble dress. There were also sculptures, watercolors, and oil landscapes of all seasons, each with their own unspeakable beauty. The halls were now flooded with light, a sun come out to regular hours with the spring season in full-swing. The suits of armor gleamed brightly and stood proudly lining the walls, no longer a haunt for new visitors in the castle.

And what a busy place! So many bodies moving that Alex had only ever seen as _things_. She and Roberto have continued their sparring lessons, and she has learned from one raucous evening and the aching, ensuing morning to never challenge Birgitte to any sort of drinking contest. Dozens of people keep the castle up to ship-shape in order to accommodate the procession of visitors that has been flowing in and out since she and Kara had taken up residence there for the season—Alex doesn’t know what will come of the farm, only that she could never sell it. She had dusted off her plans for repair and shown them to Astra, pointing out the spot on the map where she would like to begin construction on the windmill. Astra had told her that they could go down and stay for several days, possibly look into expanding the cottage.

“Why an expansion?” Alex had asked.

“I would want it to be comfortable for you,” Astra had told her. “Give you and Kara your own spaces, perhaps a room for her paints and chemicals so that the place does not reek of that thinning agent.”

“It’s never bothered me before.”

“Yes, but it bothers _me_.”

“Quite presumptive of you to believe you would be getting an invitation.”

“Oh,” Astra had said, turning back to the map spread on the table before them, the light pouring over their shoulders from the high windows in the library. “I only meant… of course, I did not mean to be so foolish—”

“Astra,” Alex had grabbed her by the back of the neck and turned her toward her face, then had kissed the doubt away.

“Mmmm, does that not qualify as invitation?” Astra had asked, lingering against her ear and nuzzling affectionately.

“Back to the plans, General,” Alex had advised her, for they grew increasingly distracted when in each other’s presence now more than ever before. “And of course you’re invited.”

That exchange had taken place two days prior, but now they were hosting something of a castle ‘reopening’ for those that lived within a few hour’s journey from the estate. It did not surprise Alex when she discovered that though Astra had not left the castle nor truly received visitors in over a decade, she was still a responsible landowner. Taxes were collected and redistributed for wells to be built among the roadsides of her lands, and she allowed those who lived within her woods to hunt them with certain quotas per the change of season. Astra had even written to and expected some gentleman, one Jean-Baptiste Chardin, to arrive and speak with Kara about her paintings.

Quite the affair, but not particularly formal, since it was to be a garden party.

That does not stop Alex from feeling incredibly nervous and entirely out of her depth.

She arrives at Astra's rooms and peeks into her quarters just as Amélie finishes lacing the ties of the General’s stays.

“Merci, Amélie, that will be all for now.”

The lady’s maid takes her leave, but not before Alex places a finger over her own lips, indicating to Amélie that she will announce herself. She quietly moves behind the wardrobe and watches as Astra hangs her selected gown upon the changing screen, removes a pair of shined boots from the closet, then retrieves a curious strap from a drawer, humming to herself in the process. From a separate compartment in the chest of drawers she pulls a dagger with a jeweled hilt, pointed and deadly, but an instrument of utter fascination in Astra’s hands. Astra twirls it absently with her fingers, twisting the hilt into position with the blade up, then down, to where she can grip the handle and drag the steel across whatever surface she intends to mutilate.

Such talent should not stoke that heat in her gut that Alex has come to associate with _other_ activities, but the sight of Astra in her petticoat and corset holding that dagger with such expertise leaves Alex yearning and wanting, as is her custom these days when she and Astra stand hardly three feet from one another. Astra props her stockinged foot atop the cushioned stool set before her vanity and attaches the leather strap and sheath to her upper thigh, the garters trailing down over a pale, muscled expanse of leg Alex has yet to have the privilege of touching. After securing the buckles and holstering the weapon, Astra allows the fabric of her first petticoat to fall back over her leg before taking her seat and facing the mirror of her vanity.

Alex approaches with what she hopes is some degree of stealth, observing as Astra frowns at her own reflection. The servants had to bring the vanity into the west wing to give Astra a mirror once again—Alex has been witness to the multiple times Astra has walked by other mirrors in the castle and double-taked, as if she is startled by the completely new person staring back at her. At the mirror, Astra tucks her curls behind her ears and throws her hair over her shoulder. She sighs, pulls it all back up, then lets it fall once more in light of her indecision.

“I could help you put it up, if you’d like,” Alex says, crossing toward her.

Alex watches Astra’s cheeks go pink in the reflection, her lips drawn back in a smile.

“Alexandra,” she says. “Farmer, fighter, lady’s maid—is there anything you cannot do?”

“Get you used to seeing yourself, it would seem,” Alex says, bending to place a kiss against Astra’s neck before turning her face upwards to meet Astra’s eyes in the mirror. “Are you alright?”

“It is still strange,” she confesses, bringing her hand up to touch the one of Alex’s that is currently kneading the muscles of her shoulders. “It is not only the scars… I have aged a decade, Alexandra. Kara is a woman grown and I am not who I once was.”

“What about that scares you?” Alex continues, dipping toward Astra’s opposite side, skimming her lips up the tendons of Astra’s neck and leaving balmy, opened-mouthed kisses along the way. Astra’s breath catches and her body tenses, frozen, then subsequently relaxes, surrendering to Alex’s worship of her skin. Alex scratches her fingernails just over the flesh near Astra’s clavicle, wondering if the woman will bust out of her bodice.

“It… does not… scare… _Alex_ ,” Astra says, moving her right arm up to clutch at the back of Alex’s hair, neither much caring about rumpling the braided chignon Alex had thrown together for the reception. Alex kisses and kisses and would endlessly lavish Astra’s body with the attention it deserves if she knew it would relieve some of her General’s doubts.

“Would you like me to tell you I find you beautiful, General?” Alex asks her, steamy and close against her ear, clutching at Astra’s side over that damnable corset. She kisses once more near Astra’s hairline, trailing her fingers up the bare expanse of the woman’s arm. “Or would you like me to tell you I love you in spite of that?”

Astra pulls with the authority of a leader and turns, swinging her legs over the cushioned bench in a flurry of wanton intent. She rises and presses at Alex’s waist, surging across the floor in such rambunctious haste the drooping fabric of her petticoats parts to reveal that enticing length of leg.

“Tell me whatever you wish, but do not stop kissing me.”

Alex dives in again, obeying her General’s order. They meet and retract and stroke each other's skin in ways that have only been hinted at until now. Their desire building, kept in check by enchantments and onlookers and relations and castle upkeep, now let loose with all the heated fury of beams shot with ultimate precision from Astra's eyes. Alex licks into her mouth and twirls her tongue against Astra's, thankful the General had not tied her hair up so her hands can get lost in those dense curls.

With Alex now backed against the post of Astra’s large, canopied bed, Astra begins her assault on the patches of Alex’s exposed skin. Warm hands on Alex’s bare forearms that then meander down and over the fabric of the dress, playing with the laces covering her chest. Some quick work and a wonderfully dexterous hand slips under the green fabric and palms at the paper-thin covering over Alex’s breast, warm, greedy fingers prepared to tear through the stays and tissue-like chemise. Astra squeezes as she kisses her, and Alex cannot stop the groan rumbling up from her chest.

“Oh, Alex—”

They breathe as heavily as they do when sparring with their blades, and Alex feels the sharp dig of teeth almost pierce the flesh of her neck.

“Astra—nnngh!”

Astra is overzealous, Alex enthralled. Astra has pulled the dress from Alex’s shoulder and left her mark there, a semi circle of pinky, possessive indents still shining from the attention of her General’s mouth. Alex drags Astra up by the hair, a return to lips, tongues, taste and teeth, the _finally_ ringing through their brains shared and understood as so many other sentiments are. Turning her head for Astra to go back to her shoulder Alex glances down, catching a glimpse from that side slit where the leather strap wraps about the skin of Astra’s thigh; that jagged, sparkly blade hidden where only a lover or an enemy (or both) might see it. They kiss and touch and rock while the bed creaks behind them and ooooooh, oh, they really shouldn’t be doing this—not with a roomful of guests arriving below, preparing to receive them at any moment.

“Closer darling…” Hot and wet and sensuous against Alex’s neck.

How they end up sitting on the bed with their skirts rucked up about their waists, Alex will never remember. They have kissed and teased and held each other in their arms, but never have their physical exchanges escalated so quickly. Never has she found Astra squirming beneath her, groping at her corset, pulling her head down into breathless kisses that make her forget her own name. Never has Alex felt bold enough to straddle Astra’s left leg in order to take what she wants: Alex clutches at the right armored thigh and runs her fingers down the straps of the garters holding both Astra’s stockings and her weapon in place. Astra shivers, raising her leg, and Alex grabs hold of the underside and draws it against her hip, insatiable hands pressing into that beautiful expanse of flesh.

“Concealing weapons beneath your skirts,” Alex says breathily, feeling Astra work her lips over the skin that bulges overtop the neckline of her chemise. Why does Alex want her lower, dipping into her chest? Why can’t she have her everywhere all at once? “You promised to teach me that one day,” Alex manages despite her heady state. She continues moving against Astra, searching, seeking; for what had started as distraction for Astra’s anxieties is currently devolving into something else entirely. Indolent and luscious. Ardent and impassioned.

“For once I find…hah, find myself less interested in fighting… in fighting than—” Alex digs her nails into Astra’s leg near the dagger and gathers up a handful of the woman’s curls. “Alexandra…” Astra responds, pulling Alex back down to kiss her slowly, opening her mouth and soothing her tongue against Alex’s own. Alex feels those hands fearing to drift lower over her body, so she guides them where she wants them and sighs into the kiss when Astra forcibly fits their pelvises together, snug and perfect and as close to each other as their garments will allow.

And oh, how wonderful it feels, how burning, how intense, to love Astra so fully and to be loved in return. Alex presses and Astra falls back with careful control, guiding Alex down on top of her.

It’s difficult to breathe, both of them stuck in these terrible corsets and kissing with such vigor. It is no easy task floundering about with each other, tugging at skirts and pulling at hair and rocking to an inevitable tempo that has been building for quite some time.

Why were they in their formal corsets again?

Astra beneath her, groaning little loves into her lips, Alex above, her hand on Astra’s leg, the strap, the dresses, the _formal_ dresses, for the _reception_ —

Alex yanks her hand away from its journey beneath Astra’s petticoat and pushes herself away, weight held up on hands splayed either side of Astra’s head and breathing as if she’s just run a mile. It takes her a moment but she eventually sits back on her thighs, pulling haphazardly at her near-ruined chemise. She blinks in an attempt to regain her senses, steepling her fingers over her nose and shutting her eyes for several seconds. With Astra spread beneath her, breathing just as heavily, it is difficult to compose her uninhibited energies. Especially while operating with the knowledge of what she’d fully intended on doing to the mistress of this castle.

“We… we have guests,” she pants, opening her eyes. “Later, because—reception—Astra, I—”

“Alex…” Astra groans beneath her, those brown curls splayed out on the bed, her pupils blown black as midnight, seemingly ruined by Alex’s touch.

“Can I not send them home?” Astra whines, applying some rather convincing pressure with the hand that had migrated toward the top of Alex’s bodice. “So that we may continue—”

“You might gain the reputation of a terrible host, if you did so.”

“I have been no host at all for ten years,” Astra remarks, sliding her hands down Alex’s sides. “My reputation is of little concern to me when you are making those sounds.”

“And what sounds are those?” Alex asks with a smirk, grabbing for Astra’s hands and pulling her upright to sit on the edge of the bed. Astra merely wraps her arms round Alex and holds her hostage in a completely novel way, resting her head upon Alex’s chest.

“The kind that make my knees weak, that make me want to do terribly wicked things to your body,” Astra tells her, the tips of her fingers pressing insistently through the material at Alex’s lower back. “But also…you tell me you love me, and it makes me realize the last ten years were worth the misery just to have you now. I would kneel before you and you could do whatever you want with me, I love you so.”

“Oh, Arthur,” Alex teases, running her hand through Astra’s hair. “How noble and romantic you must fancy yourself.”

“Would you leave me for Guinevere, if given the chance?”

“Not even if you threatened me with starvation, for I know when to call your bluff, General,” Alex replies, tilting Astra’s head up and placing a kiss upon her forehead. “And after what we nearly did in your bed, I doubt any convent would take me.”

Astra flushes beautifully then rises, crosses her room toward the gown she had selected from the host of others. “Will you help me?”

“Of course.”

They have to retie the laces on Astra’s stays and tug at the sleeves of her chemise, then the waistband of her rumpled petticoat. She pulls on another petticoat over the first and then dons the flowing dress died the color of boysenberry, a lovely complement to Alex’s sage green garment (which undergoes a number of readjustments in the process as well, accepting one wet, mouth-shaped spot near the shoulder they’ll just have to cleverly explain away).

“Why so quiet, General?” Alex asks her, looping Astra’s hair through a silken violet ribbon, tying it securely so that her curls fall down her back. She loops her index finger in that white streak, fascinated as she was the first night they met in the dungeon. “You look ever the Grand Duchess.”

“I have something for you,” Astra looks back up at her, their eyes locked in the mirror. How their minor detour had begun in the first place. “But I fear it is not the proper time.”

“Poor planning on your part, for now you’ve piqued my interest.”

Astra shrugs, then crosses to the bedside table with the curved legs and shellacked finish to remove a small box from the drawer. A rose is carved on the outside of the case, and Alex nearly takes it for some other ornament from the enchantment: mirror, flower, servants, why not a box as well? But there’s no magic to it. It is a plain wooden box with a plain golden band inside. Astra shows it to her, plucks the ring from the casing, then motions for Alex’s hand.

“The night we first met, you told me you had no desire to marry,” Astra says, squeezing Alex’s proffered fingers. “I said I found your statement refreshing, for the number of women I met in Court were always so concerned with matches, for what land they would acquire, what husband or wife they would get.”

“Wife? You mean at Court—”

“It was not uncommon for those of the same sex to marry into alliances, or to merge lands that butted up against each other,” Astra explains. “The past few days have been so wonderfully busy, yet I wanted to speak to you about marriage. If that prospect is something that you would be amenable to.”

“Given your penchant for rather romantic declarations, the formality of this exchange is rather underwhelming,” Alex responds, twiddling the fingers Astra holds in her hand.

“I did not want to expend time on such efforts without discussing the matter with you, especially after what you said when we first met. I have no desire to pressure you into a marriage if it is not something that you want. Though I hope nothing else would change between us, even if we do not marry.”

Alex looks down at the plain golden band held securely between Astra’s thumb and forefinger. She pictures her own hand sporting that band, knowing it’s Astra’s, knowing it’s _theirs_ , and her heart swells.

“I never believed I could want anyone as much as you. I never… never believed that was an option for someone like me,” Alex answers, stepping into Astra, bringing their foreheads together. “In the villages, women would not… I could never—” Alex kisses Astra when words fail her, lighter and easier and wonderful in so many regards. “I would very much like to marry you, if that is what you are asking me. If I speak with Kara and… and…”

Astra doesn’t step away when she takes Alex’s right hand.

“I knew you would wish to speak with your sister first. But now that I know you are receptive to such a union, I must say the real proposal will be far more romantic than some salacious romp prior to an event.”

“But I rather enjoyed our salacious romp,” Alex answers her, smiling softly as Astra slips the golden band onto Alex’s right ring finger.

“Your engagement ring will not be the same as this band,” Astra tells her. “And we will announce our formal engagement at a later date. For now, it can be our secret.”

“This is perfect,” Alex says, entranced at how the gold suits her hand. “There’s no need for anything overelaborate.”

“I know,” Astra tells her, kissing the knuckle of the ring-bearing finger. “Yet I would like to say I give my wife better presents than swords.”

“I _like_ swords.”

“Judging from the way you were manhandling my leg to get to the garters and the dagger, that does not surprise me.”

“Keep talking like that General,” Alex tells her, clasping tightly at Astra’s hand. “And we’ll be later than we already are.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“She’s going to kill him.”

“She’s not going to kill him.”

“You don’t know that. Look how stiff he is.”

“It’s a waltz, Kara, I’m pretty sure posture’s high up on the list.”

“I didn’t even think James knew _how_ to waltz,” Kara grumbles, eyeing Astra and James as they take a turn about the garden patio.

It’s sunny out and the patio is teeming with visitors. Men and women of varying classes and relatively informal states of dress wave for servants and the trays laden with hors d’oeuvres, flutes of the finest champagne passed about for everyone in attendance. Ferns and other flower arrangements have been placed around the garden for further decoration, despite the sea of flowers beginning to bloom for what looks to be a marvelous spring. A tasteful string quartet plays in three-quarter time for the handful of couples swirling about on the dance floor, Astra and James included.

“Well, now that you do know he can dance, I don’t think it would be an issue if you interrupted,” Alex tells Kara.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” Kara asks.

“You. What else would they be talking about?” Alex takes another sip of champagne, smiling at Birgitte as she whirls by in Michèle’s arms. “Look at them both. They’re beaming like they’ve just disclosed some terribly embarrassing information about your history.”

“I didn’t do embarrassing things as a kid,” Kara gets a little snooty, shoveling another canapé into her face and chewing with a significant lack of royal manners. “I was a princess, you know.”

“As to the embarrassing bits…” Alex continues, turning back to tease her sister. “I’m sure Bartholomew the _bunny_ would disagree.”

Kara rounds on Alex, clutching desperately at her arm and scrunching her forehead together in utter mortification. “Alex, not so _loud_.”

“Afraid James will hear?”

“How do you even _know_ about that?” Kara mutters, snatching a flute of champagne and then downing half the glass in one go. Her face turns red as the strawberries piled high on the serving platter and she sputters against the taste.

“I wheedled some baby stories out of Astra,” Alex confesses.

“I really don’t want to know what you had to do to get that information.”

“Nothing scandalous, you prude.”

“Sure, Alex. And that spot on your shoulder is a bruise from ‘sparring’.”

“What…?” Alex dips her chin and looks to her shoulder, pulling the neckline of the dress further up over the bite mark Astra had left there for seemingly all the world to see. It remains partially covered by the dress as long as Alex doesn’t move or breathe or reach for anything within five inches of her.

“I lost ten livre to Roberto when you two came skipping down that staircase ten minutes late.”

“It’s not my fault that you’re a poor gambler, Kara,” Alex says, her gaze drifting back to Astra as she takes a swooping step behind her, those beautiful indigo skirts revolving about her waist as she looks over James’s shoulder to catch Alex’s eye.

“You’re… you’re not put off by Astra and me, are you?” Alex dares to ask. She’s dropped hints over the past few days and Kara has seemed extremely flexible with the idea, if not openly receptive. Then again, she’s never voiced such a direct question before, but with Astra’s band encircling her finger, she feels Kara’s blessing can be the only next logical step.

“No, I’m not put off.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. But if I was?” Kara takes another sip of her champagne, her focus locked on the woman in question.

“Then… then that is something we would have to work through, I suppose,” Alex says, deflating slightly, her shoulders sagging. “I don’t know how it came to be, but… here we are.”

“Astra and I were very close when I was a child,” Kara tells her. “We are not where we once were in our relationship, but that is our burden to bear, not yours, Alex.”

“But if you’re uncomfortable—”

“I am no more uncomfortable with the two of you together than you are with anyone I would introduce you to as my prospective match. She makes you happy and looks at you like I hope someone will one day look at me. And that is all I’ve ever wanted for you, Alex.”

“She loves me,” Alex tells Kara, mumbling over the lip of her second glass of champagne for the afternoon. “And for all her idiosyncrasies, I love her as well.”

“That would explain the wedding band on your finger,” Kara says, glancing quickly toward Alex’s right hand. “I won’t say anything. I imagine you two are waiting on… something.” Kara sets her champagne aside, readjusts her skirt and waits for the dancers to finish clapping for the quartet. “Though don’t use me as an excuse. I’m ready for maid-of-honor duties whenever you are.”

Kara skips off to catch James before he can slink off the floor, nodding nervously and stepping closer to him as the players strike up the next song. Astra bows out and makes her way over to Alex, extending an arm.

“Would you want to lead this time?” Astra asks her, threading their fingers together as Alex sets her champagne flute aside.

“Now that these skirts won’t cast you into the next county, I could give it a try,” Alex says, placing her palm over Astra’s waist and extending their joined left hands. They twirl and sway, accompanied by the smiles of the surroundings guests.

“That boy seems charming enough,” Astra tells her, nodding off to James and Kara. “I do not know if he is good enough for Kara, but there are no glaring personality deficiencies.”

“She thought you were going to kill him.”

“Surely not.”

“She was joking, but she’s got a point. You can be intimidating.”

“Extremely intimidating lying heaving and helpless beneath you."

“Astra!”

“What? No one can hear us.” Astra squeezes Alex’s shoulder with her free hand.

“I don’t like Roberto’s look. Apparently there’s some betting as to our… interactions.”

“That is unsurprising. I have had to drag him away from the tavern more than once,” Astra answers, dipping her head to catch Alex’s eye. “Your discussion with Kara has you… more reserved than your usual self.”

“She saw the ring,” Alex says, moving her hand higher on Astra’s back, aware of the metal against her finger. She wonders if she will ever not feel it, if it will become as second-nature to her life as Astra has.

“And?”

“She’s fine with it, I think. Wants us both happy, even if you two aren’t where you used to be.”

“I do not imagine we ever will be what we once were,” Astra murmurs. “But you brought us back together. Brought me out of such suffering. She must know I would do anything for you?”

“Are you promising happily ever after?”

“Why would I ever promise such a dull thing?” Astra asks, slowing as the music comes to a stop. “It was only through my sadness that I came to recognize and appreciate this happiness with you, Alexandra.”

“It doesn’t mean you deserved all those years—”

“I am at peace with my choices. They led me to you,” Astra says, placing her palm over Alex’s cheek, tilting her head up. “May I kiss you, or will Kara tease you mercilessly?”

“I’ll be teased regardless of you kissing me, so have at it, General.”

Astra does, nothing as searching as the kisses traded in her chambers an hour ago, but sweet and satisfactory nonetheless. Roberto starts something of a cheer, followed by applause from the masses, and Alex can feel the unwanted scrutiny turned toward her as Astra steps forward and dips her head to the crowd in acknowledgement. Alex knows that Astra was once a royal, but watching her engage with the people around her… it really feels like the woman might be a queen.

“Alexandra and I thank you all for coming,” Astra addresses the crowd. “Eat, drink, have a turn about the floor. Enjoy yourselves and have a lovely afternoon!”

They had made the rounds at the outset of the party, greeting various farmers, landowners and shop keepers, all of which Astra had been able to ask some personal question, much to the surprise and delight of all those fortunate enough to have property within her county. Which is why Alex finds it odd that Astra has discreetly moved from the center of the patio, done a turn about the hors d’oeuvres table, and snatched a full bottle of champagne in the process.

“What are you doing?” Alex whispers to her, slinking after Astra as she disappears beyond an eight-foot hedge. She picks up her pace, following Astra through the maze of hedges and bushes and flowers until she hears the tale-tale _pop!_ ahead on the right.

She finds Astra extending a fizzing bottle of champagne out beyond the radius of her skirts until the liquid stops bubbling. Then the woman tosses the bottle back, takes a hearty sip, and swipes at the residue on lips as Alex comes closer.

“Do you…?” Astra extends the bottle and Alex takes it, grabbing the neck and upending the thing while taking several swallows. Alex loves champagne nearly as much as she loves Astra.

“Why did you come back here?”

“Starting on that happily ever after you seem so taken with,” Astra tells her, gathering Alex into arms once again, far closer and much more intimate than their chaste holds at the reception. “I am sure that this romantic notion will fade over time when you start irritating me again—”

“I already irritate you quite regularly,” Alex says, slipping her arms over Astra’s shoulders.

“Very true. Yet despite that annoyance you still inspire me to sneak off to the gardens so I can kiss you properly.”

“That’s no happily ever after, but happily ever after _noon_ ,” Alex says, falling into her love, prepared to follow Astra into gardens or observatories or battlefields for the rest of her life.

From the way Astra kisses her, it would seem her General is of the same mind.

 

* * *

 

 

The End

 

(And they lived happily and gaily ever after).

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okie dokie smokies, that's curtain on the Beauty and the Beast AU for General Danvers. I wrote this faster than any other multi-chap fic I've ever written in my life because the plot was already laid out for me, but boy, did I enjoy working on it! And I'm eternally grateful for everybody who kept up and commented and kudo'd the fic! Strange premise for a minor pairing but it just wouldn't leave me be!
> 
> Also, teaching moment for the day, Chardin was an actual French painter who did a lot of still-lifes. I think there's several dead rabbits... don't tell Kara, she loves Bartholomew!
> 
> Now I'm off to work on some merfolk stories, I shouldn't be gone for too terribly long :D
> 
> -Missy

**Author's Note:**

> beauty and beast press everywhere and its one of my fave disney movies seriously both the live action leads and sets and music its all gorgeous and i know the narrative is problematic but i *claps* dont *claps* care *claps* its my fave story and the broadway songs and the ballroom dance scene ugh LET ME HAVE THIS AU i know theyre a little (a lot) outta character but just roll with the general danvers fluffness k
> 
> drop a comment if you feel so inclined :D


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